Papua’S £6,000

Relief In The Territory.

From Our Own Correspondent

Pt. Moresby. Nov. 8.

THE announcement that the Federal Government has decided to restore the Australian grant to Papua to £40,000, thus making an additional £6,000 of revenue available, has been received here with much relief.

When it appeared as if the grant for the current year would remain at £34,000, the outlook was depressing in the extreme. It was impossible to re duce administrative costs any more, without doing serious damage to the economic structure of this Territory, and it was not possible to wring any more revenue out of a people already impoverished by the calamitous fall in the value of primary products and the withdrawal of half of the rubber bonus.

The position, even now, is by no means easy. But we should be able to carry on and hope for better times.

Without this £6,000, there would have been something approaching a general bankruptcy and a very serious depre ciation of Australian assets in Papua.

The first reduction of the Common wealth Grant of £50,000 came in 1929.

It was reduced then to £42,000. A fur ther reduction occurred in 1931, to £40,000, and in 1932 a still further re duction to £34,000. Concurrently with the reductions, in the Grant, the total of exports and imports dropped badly

and total revenue fell from 1928-9 to 1931-2 from £150,251 to £130,115. Thus the Papuan Administration had to carry on in 1932-3 a greater amount of work than in 1928-9, on account of its increased activity, with less revenue.

This was done by means of the most rigid economy and, when economy had been stretched to its utmost limits, by the deferment of almost necessary expenditure till such time as the financial position should improve.

In spite of these precautions, and in spite of the slight help given by the new issue of postage stamps and the imposition of a primage tax of 4 per cent, on all imports, which was all that the industry of the country could bear, revenue for 1932-3 fell again to £128,762.