Chapter V. The World Overseas

Growth in industrial countries as a whole again amounted to nearly 5 per cent in 1966 (table 47) but the rate slowed down during the summer after moving ahead quite sharply in the first half of the year (table 34).Industrial production was more or less static in North America after August, and in Europe production has actually fallen slightly, reflecting the declines in Germany and the United Kingdom as well as in some of the smaller countries. The relatively favourable overall result in 1966 arose largely from the diversity of phasing as between different countries. France, Italy and Japan had found it necessary some two years ago to adopt the type of anti-inflationary restrictive policies now being applied in most other industrial countries. They therefore now have reserves of unused labour and capacity which enable them to expand without the inhibitions about wage and price inflation which are afflicting the other main industrial countries.