Australia Takes Steps to Operate Copra Marketing

Relief For Copra-Producers

Australia Takes Steps to Operate Copra Marketing Board

REGULATIONS issued on June 12, un der the National Security Act, make provision, so far as Australia is concerned, for the operation of the copra marketing plan, of which details were published in our last issue.

New Guinea’s Crown Law Officer (Mr.

Hogan) and a representative of the Expropriation Board (Mr. J. C. Archer, of the Treasury Dept.) went by ’plane from Rabaul to Canberra late in May, to assist in connection with the Australian Copra Control Regulations (which were gazetted on June 12 and will operate from a date to be proclaimed).

It is part of this plan that there shall be local committees set up to carry out the plan in each of the various territories which subscribe to the copra marketing board —namely, Papua and New Guinea, which are Australian; Fiji, Solomon Islands, Gilbert and Ellice Is lands and Tonga, which come under the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific; Western Samoa and Cook Islands, which are controlled by New Zealand; and the Free French Colonies of New Caledonia, French Oceania, and New Hebrides, which are now controlled by the Free French Governor-General of the South Pacific Colonies of Free Prance, collaborating with Australia and NZ.

It is provided that each of the several territories supporting the plan shall make its own arrangements, through its local committee, to give assistance to its copra producing industry. The arrangements now made by Australia, in regard to Papua and New Guinea, provide that the committee shall buy copra from the planters, as on the plantations, at:— Hot-air dried copra, £4/10/- per ton.

Plantation sun-dried copra, £4/7/6 per ton.

Smoke-dried copra, £4 per ton.

The ton, in each case, is a “long”, or Imperial, ton.

The Committee will be responsible for the payment of the freight from the plantation to the noint of shipment.

These prices will operate for six months, after which they will be reviewed at regular intervals of six months.

The personnel of the Australian com mittees to operate the plan in Papua and New Guinea has not been announced nor has the date from which the plan will operate. It is presumed, however, that the various committees appointed in the different territories will come into operation at about the same date, sub ject to collaboration with the central Copra Marketing Board—which, it is understood, will have its headquarters in Sydney, and general supervision over the committees. It is presumed that the prices stated above will be approximately the prices paid to copra-producers in all the territories.

Each territory, however, has the right to make any additional arrangement for the assistance of its own copra producers; and it was reliably reported in Sydney, on June 13, that Australia will subsidise pro duction in Papua and New Guinea, in addition to the prices promised above.

Official confirmation of this has not been received, however.

The Australian Minister said, on June 13, that “plans have been formulated for the appointment of a Pacific Copra Mar keting Board to handle the sales of copra from all British areas in the Pacific”; and it is assumed from this that the conra marketing pool to be thus formed will be compulsory. That is to say, it is assumed that all copra produced in the South Pacific, from whatever source, must pro into the pool and be sold through the Board. This, of course, brings up several knotty problems—as, for example, the

shipments of copra from the Lever plan tations in the Solomons to the mills in Sydney, and the need for keeping the new Carpenter crushing mills in Vancouver properly supplied. Is it intended that copra produced on the plantations, owned by Levers and Carpenters, shall first be sold to the Marketing Board, and then re-sold by the Marketing Board to the companies’ mills, for crushing, and that the profits made from such transactions are to be distributed by the Marketing Board to all the growers contributing to the pool? We have no answer to this, When the original plan for the Copra Marketing Board was formulated, those concerned had a guarantee from the British Government that it could take 90,000 tons of South Pacific copra per annum, and it was ascertained that there were also limited markets in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Mexico. Since

“PIM”, on June 16, was officially informed that temporary arrangements are being made to enable Papua and New Guinea growers to get £4/10/- per ton on plantations at “an early date”, pending appointment of Copra Control Committees for Papua and New Guinea.

then it would apnear that there is a considerable market in Japan—but this market is highly suspect, and at present under a British embargo, because it is feared that copra (which is highly valuable in wartime) may be finding its way to Germany through Japan.

But it has become plain during the past six months, while the various parties concerned have been guilty of dithering and delay, that the real problem before any Copra Marketing Board is not so much finding markets as finding trans port. Ships for copra are in increasingly short supply.

“Give us the ships and we will guarantee to find markets for all the South Pacific copra that is being produced”, said one of the leading South Sea merchants to the PIM, only a few days ago. “It is easy enough for the British Minister of Poods to promise to receive 90,000 tons of South Pacific copra; but it is a very different story when the British Minister of Ship ping is asked to supply transport for the 90.000 tons.”

There are no indications, at the moment of going to press, of how the Copra Marketing Board (still unap pointed) is going to operate, and how it is going to get its copra to whatever markets it may discover. But it is. at least, comforting and reassuring to find that at long last the copra-producers of the South Pacific are to get a guarantee of a sufficient sum per ton to allow them to live —although they can only barely live on the rates stated above.