Cost Of Transporting

Produce

How Aeroplanes Could Be Used

THE need for cheaper transport in Papua and New Guinea, if planters there are to make an adequate liveli hood, is illustrated by figures submitted by a Papuan coffee-grower.

The solution seems to lie in the de velopment of aerial transport.

Dutch coffee, from Java, is being dumped in Sydney at from 2d. to 3d. per lb., c.i.f., Sydney. The actual cost of production in Java is said to be not less than 3½d. per lb.

The Papuan coffee-grower, whose figures we have at hand, shows that the costs of sending his coffee from his plan tation to the Australian market were: Papuan transport and handling 876 per lb.

Australian charges 598 per lb.

This is equal to practically 1½d. per lb. —not far short of what Dutch coffee has been , sold for in Sydney.

When this Papuan planter sent his coffee crop to the Australian market in 1934, he was charged £164 by the Aus tralian Customs, for the portion landed in Sydney, and £75 for the portion landed in Melbourne —all on account of that monstrous imposition called “primage duty” (10 per cent.).

The Dutch-grown coffee pays a duty of 4d. per lb., in addition to primage; but the foregoing figures show that the Papuan industry requires all the protec tion it can get, if it is to meet the com petition from “dumped” products.

This is another argument against the maintenance of the primage duty against Australian territory products.

Probably it will be only a little while before aeroplanes will call, at pre arranged times, at plantations in the in terior of Papua and New Guinea, to pick up produce for transportation to the ports. It could be done at any time, by arrangement between the planters, the Administrations and the aviation com panies—mostly, a matter of providing suitable landing-grounds.