Complaint from New Hebrides

Letter to the Editor THE feelings of New Hebrides coconut planters are becoming extremely heated, as they suffer continual injustice at the hands of the big Pacific trading and shipping interests.

The Australian Government’s declared price for Condominium-grown copra, as you are no doubt aware, is £2O/4/3 per ton, f.o.b. Vila; but it must not be thought that producers are able to get anything like that. Unfortunately, they must accept a price which the shipping company supplying the transport service to Australia chooses to pay them for their copra on the beach, otherwise it can remain on the beach —unsold, except in a few isolated cases. The unreasonable price that sellers are forced to take under this treatment is between £l3 and £l4 per ton; yet the moment that that copra is placed aboard this buyer’s ship, it becomes automatically worth £2O/4/3 per ton to its new owners.

We contend that this big margin is unfair to the producers.

The new owners of the copra, in addi tion to the £2O/4/3 per ton, collect their usual profitable freight charges from the Australian Government, plus, of course, all other charges incurred in delivering the copra to Sydney store.

Even those planters who sell their copra at the outports should, we con tend, receive at least £lB per ton; a price that would leave a liberal margin to cover any costs which the buyers may

have to incur, and still leave a fair profit for them when they “cash-in” at the f.o.b. Vila rates.

I am, etc.,

Pacifique.

P(.rt Vila, NH,