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War Economy

Other Price Changes

Other Price Changes

The success of the stabilisation scheme clearly required holding costs and prices at all points of distribution, not just at retail. Wholesale prices of locally produced goods, which had risen 17 per cent in the first half of the war, rose less than 6 per cent in the second half. Stabilisation of wages and other costs was having its effect.

Imported items continued to create stabilisation difficulties, though their price rise of 11 per cent in the three years following economic stabilisation was at less than a quarter of the rate in the preceding three years. Chart 60 compares price changes between December 1942 and September 1945. In these three years, when wholesale prices of imported goods rose by 10·6 per cent, and of locally produced goods by 2·4 per cent, the Wartime Prices Index rose only 0·1 per cent.2 The chart provides a good gauge of the effectiveness of the stabilisation scheme, centring on the Wartime Prices Index.

page 315
chart of economic statistics

Chart 60
PRICE CHANGES AFTER STABILISATION
INDEX NUMBERS: BASE DECEMBER 1942 (= 1000)

2 Imported goods had made up over half the content of the old Retail Prices Index, but the emphasis was deliberately changed in the Wartime Prices Index and the imported content was probably rather less than half. See also p. 310.