PRICES OF UNITED KINGDOM EXPORTS TO THE COLONIES. Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

4. The situation has also changed since the question was originally submitted to the Committee, in that the passage of time has emphasised that the main economic problem with which the Colonies are faced at present is not the difficulty of paying for their imports but the emergence of surplus purchasing power which cannot be absorbed by imports. There are exceptions to this general phenomenon, e.g. in certain West Indian Colonies, and its existence does not entirely remove the psychological difficulty of the prices paid by the Colonies for their imports showing demonstrably greater increases than the prices realised by their exports.