Copra Growers’ Goose Laid Few Golden Eggs

But Fiji Government Would Now Like It Plucked

Letter to the Editor

\ T the next meeting of the Legislative Council of Fiji a Bill is to be intro duced for the purpose of imposing a tax on copra exported from or con sumed in Fiji. This tax is to be, in the words of a highly placed personage, “an attempt to relieve the planters of some of the profits they are making out of the miseries of Europe.”

This shortsighted view fails entirely to take into consideration the miseries of the planter during the days when Unilever

wielded the big stick and copra prices fell below the cost of production.

Figures recently worked out show that 5oL a 7 erage price of copra f °r the period 1928-48 was £l2/15/ per ton, while the average cost of production (landed at Suva) was, during the same period £lO p er ton This shows a truly handsome profit of £2/10/- per ton from which had to be deducted the wages of a European overseer.

A graph for the same period shows chat the actual price obtained during the years 1930-42 fell below the average cost of production except for a brief period in 1937. The lowest price recorded was in the July-December period in 1934. was then bringing £3/2/6 per ton.

A hurricane in 1929 laid waste many Fijian plantations and these did not be gin producing again until 1933, by which time copra was worth about £5 per ton.

These figures will stand examination and in view of these facts it becomes dif ficult to see how any Government official, be he high or low, can sit in his office, secure in the thoughft of his regular emoluments, come rain or hurricane, and calmly propose depriving the planter of the hardearned rewards of his labour.

But this is, unfortunately, typical of officialdom which rarely has to face up to the realities of a situation.

Fiji, Nov. 11. I am, etc..

C. P. Godhard.