Cocoa Prices Drop

New Guinea Beans Down to £l6l per Ton

QUOTATIONS for cocoa beans from the Pacific Islands showed a marked weakening during the month.

New Guinea cocoa, which commanded a nrice of anything between £2OO and £240 according to quality, has fallen to £l6l. New Hebrides cocoa beans, formerly in the vicinity of £240, are to-day bringing only £165 in Australia. Samoan cocoa one of that Territory’s main industries— has also receded in price in recent months and now is near the £2OO mark, from the mid-1948 quotation of £230.

Western Pacific cocoa prices are based usually on the rates ruling for Accra cocoa, from the Gold Coast Colony in British West Africa —quotations for which are now at £152/10/- sterling (equivalent to just over £l9O Aust.). Last year, when Accra beans were in severely short supply, Australian confectionery manufacturers paid up to £2BO per ton for good West African cocoa.

Not much Western Samoan cocoa —only 75 tons annually—reaches Australia, the bulk of it being exported to USA, where it is a profitable dollar-earner, and to New Zealand. The authority controlling the international allocation of cocoa has indicated that Australia’s share of the 1949 Samoan crop probably will be in creased; however, at best, the total amount will not be much more than 100 tons for the whole of the Commonwealth, Sydney merchants point out that thte drop in cocoa prices is world-wide, but that they are at a loss to explain it.

There is still a heavy demand for choco late and cocoa in all countries and prac tically 100 per cent, of the world cocoa cron has been sold each year. Only re cently a spokesman from the British Colonial Office, in a press statement, de clared that “the international shortage of cocoa beans would continue for some con siderable time and may intensify.”