Not So Hard Hit

Pacific Territories and Copra Prices

BECAUSE copra prices being received by South Seas planters are low —the result of the Anglo-French Govern ments permitting Unilever control to be exercised over the market in London —an impression has got abroad that economic conditions in the Pacific territories are very bad.

That, definitely, is not so. There is no doubt that the coconut planters who have placed “all their eggs in one basket” are having a thin time; but, of all the fourteen Pacific territories which lie south of the Equator, only two (Solomon Islands and Gilbert and Ellice Colony) are wholly dependent on copra. All of the others have some alternative indus try, which is enjoying good prices.

Papua, for instance, has rubber and some coffee; New Guinea has the gold industry and a quickly developing cocoa industry; New Caledonia has a prosper ous metal output; the New Hebrides pro duces much cocoa and coffee; Fiji has a huge output of gold and sugar; Tonga, Fiji, Samoa and the Cook Islands, all supply large quantities of bananas and oranges to the New Zealand market; Western Samoa has a highly prosperous cocoa industry; and French Oceania has a number of alternative industries, especially vanilla production.

Ten years ago, when the depression hit the Pacific territories and copra fell calamitously in price, most of the terri

tories were in a bad position—they had no other industry on which to depend for an income. But the position has changed vastly since then. It has become the deliberate policy of most of the ad ministrations to see that all the economic eggs are not in one basket.