With NZ

Fiji Maintains Trade With NZ Banana Export Pool Disbanded

From Our Own Correspondent

Suva. May 19

FIJI’S Banana Export Board has been liquidated after controlling the ex port of bananas in Fiji since Sep tember, 1939.

Banana-buying licence-holders will now dispose of their fruit themselves either to the New Zealand Internal Marketing Division or to the official Canadian agents, Oppenheimer Bros, and Co., Vancouver.

During April, New Zealand bought 580.860 lb. of Fiji bananas for £3,697; coco nut meal, 356.160 lb. for £1,431, and pea nuts. 141.600 lb. for £5.310.

Fruit, vegetables, green ginger, rice, bran and candlenut meal helped to make up the April total of £11,056.

These figures, of course, refer onlv to fruit and produce exported to New Zea land. Figures for sugar and copra which are sent to the Northern Hemisphere are not yet available.

The principal value of the figures quoted is that they give an indication of the way in which Fiji is maintaining its foothold in the New Zealand markets des pite the Dominion’s natural preference for its own tropical territories of Cook Islands. Western Samoa and Niue.

Miss Irene Lucas entertained nine guests at a farewell party at Prince’s, Brisbane, on May 17, in honour of Mrs. Howard Smith of Chelmer. Mrs. Smith will leave for Port Moresby at the end of May to rejoin her husband.

Mr. Juan Symes, son of the late H. C.

Symes of Guadalcanal and Rabaul and Mrs. Symes, of Brisbane, was in Brisbane hospital for two weeks recently. He re cuperated on the south coast of Queens land. His father, who was a well-known plantation manager in the Solomons and New Britain, was lost on the “Montevideo Maru” in June, 1942.

Mrs. W. Cottrell-Dormer, wife of the Director of Agriculture of Papua - New Guinea, is at present in Brisbane on a health trip. She is staying with her mother, Mrs. J. Barr, Gaythorne.