Interesting Figures

Taxation In Tonga

The National Income

(To the Editor.) Sir, —In your issue of February, an article appears under the heading “The Overtaxed Tongan,” by your correspondent, to which I would request sufficient space in your paper to make some allusion.

The general tone of, and opinions expressed in, the article, are of such a nature as to call for no serious comment. But to his fig ures grave exception must be taken. All of them are out of date and have no bearing whatsoever on the economic situation of the Kingdom to-day, or in the immediate future.

They are also wrong.

He takes the copra figures over a period of four years, 1926-9, and produces a tenta tive statement, by which he shows the King dom to receive and spend £330,000. To do this he estimates the copra produced at a valuation of £210,000, to which he adds sev eral thousands of pounds of taxation, etc., which should in reality be deducted from it.

It Is on the money produced by the copra that the entire Kingdom lives—viz., the Gov ernment, the missions, the trading commun ity and the people. Your correspondent is in precisely the same position as a man who, having £1,000 in the bank, draws out £500 and then makes himself out to have £ 1,500.

While admitting that the national income of an industrial, agricultural and mining country may be a difficult thing to estimate, there should be no great difficulty in the case of an agrarian country like Tonga, whose sole practical source of wealth at pre sent is copra, and whose population is com posed in the main of small peasant proprie tors.

The following are the official figures of the copra exports;

or an average value of £253,798 f.o.b. per annum. Even if we take this last sum as the national income of the Kingdom (there being no export of value except copra, and no other source of income), where does your corres pondent get the remaining £76,000 to make up his £330,000? Prom his fertile imagina tion? As a matter of fact the national in come is much less than the f.o.b. value of the exports.

The average number of tons over the four years was, say, 14,500, so we must at once deduct from £25,793 £1 per ton export tax included in the f.o.b. value, i.e., £14,500, leaving £239,298. Prom this latter sum we must further deduct the value of 239,250 empty bags in which the copra exported is bagged, these bags being imported from over seas and paid for by the copra merchants, and, not being produced in Tonga, can form no part of its national income. Their value would be abput £9,968 which, deducted from the £239,298 the leaves £229,330. This last fig ure is, as nearly as can be computed to with in a few pounds, the national income of Tonga, on the average, for the years 1926-9, and compares very poorly with the fictitious £330,000 of your correspondent, who is about £100,000 out! So much, then, for 1926-9.

But what of 1930? It was at the latter end of the period chosen by your correspon dent that the great fall in the price of copra occurred, which has changed the economic basis entirely, reduced trade to stagnation and the people to poverty. The only thing not changed is the prodigal expenditure by the Government of Tonga.

The total value of copra exported during the year 1930, as given in The Government Gazette, was £169,610 f.0.b., and the quantity 14,134 tons. This value includes £1 per ton export tax—£14,l34 —to be deducted from it, i.e., £155,476. The value of the bags in which the copra was exported must also be deducted, i.e., 233,211 empty bags valued at £9,717, leaving £145,759.

Some further deduction should perhaps be made for benzine and wear and tear of ve hicles and boats used in the transport of copra from varying distances up to 20 miles of shipping point, but we will leave this in and take the national income for the year 1930 at £145,759. The Government requires £84,555, but as they have got £14,134, above referred to, already deducted, there is a fur ther £70,421. This comes out of the £145,759, national income, leaving for the entire popu lation of 27,370 the sum of £75,338, or £2/15/1 per head per annum (excluding Gov ernment officials).

In other words one half of the entire in come of the Kingdom is taken by the Gov ernment of Tonga in taxation, a condition of affairs which does not obtain in any other country of the globe.

I am, etc.,

Veracity.

Nukualofa, April 28.

An item of interest to philatelists is the withdrawal from sale of the Raro tonga and Niue 1½d. stamps. The Raro tonga 1½d. stamp, however, reappeared in the guise of a 2d. stamp. The words “Twopence” have been im nrinted in red at the foot of the stamp.

It looks as if the overprint 2d. stamp is a temporary issue, pending the cut ting of a set of dies for a straightout new 2d. stamp.

Tons Value f.o.b. 1926 . . .. 13.992 £255,156 1927 . . .. . . 11.252 £225.044 1928 . . 15.671 £282,083 1929 . . . . 16,860 £252,911 Total. £1,015,194