Fortunes In Copra

For Some Planters

SUVA, March 16.

IF Fiji’s copra production is maintained this year, several European planters should have 1948 incomes of about £20,000 each.

But even outside Government circles, there are some signs of public criticism at what is regarded as the “isolationist” attitude adopted by some of the planters, and correspondence in the “Fiji Times” has produced a red-hot demand that the Government should leave the Europeans in their preferred “isolation” and en courage the formation of a powerful, in dependent, all-Fijian copra organisation.

The Fijians, incidentally, are officially reported to produce two-thirds of the Colony’s copra.

A sign of the times may possibly be found in a Fiji Royal Gazette notice last week which states that Mr. C. A. Stokes, a New Zealander who has been in Fiji for 23 years, has been appointed organ ising manager of the Macuata Copra Venture.

Few people had heard of the Macuata Copra Venture, but it is an organisation planned to provide for the pooling of all the Fijian-produced copra in the Macu ata Province, the selling of the copra direct to the Copra Board, the elimina tion of the middlemen, and the use of the returns for the benefit of the pro vince.