Tonga Bananas

———♦——— Marketing Trouble Predicted

Will Australia Open Her

Door?

From Our Tonga Correspondent

Nukualofa, Nov. 15,

WHERE will a market be found for Tongan bananas? From September next, it is estimated this group will produce about 30,000 cases a month.

The native and foreign growers have been planting up large areas and nine months hence Tongatabu, alone of the group, will be getting ready to dispose of from 12,000 to 15,000 cases a month.

If the northern islands —Haapai and Vavau —have been as active, the figures for the group can conservatively be doubled.

Will this Tongan fruit be thrown on a New Zealand market flooded with shipments from Fiji, Samoa and Raratonga? It can hardly reach Australia, that Commonwealth surrounded by “a barbed-wire entanglement.” Will Australia snip the wires and let the Tongan banana through in exchange for Australian products?

An answer to the questions should already be in the mould.

A Case For Pacific Islands

Federation.

The obstinacy of the Commonwealth has led to many suggestions from prominent island men. Probably the most feasible is that a not too unwieldy round table conference be staged at Suva with representatives of the Islands’ Administrations and delegates from the Islands’ Chambers of Commerce who, backed up by their respective Governments and executives, can make a concerted frontal attack on Australia’s tariff wall.

And, even if the conference was unsuccessful (as far as the Commonwealth is concerned), the cost would be negligible when compared with the incalculable benefits, which would ultimately accrue from a confederated exchange of ideas, views and opinions. ———