Growers To Get

More For Cone Result of New UK Offer to Fiji Sugar

AS announced in PIM in February, the UK Ministry of Food has increased the price to be paid for Fiji sugar by £3.5 stg. more per ton than paid in 1949. This is equivalent to a FOB price value in Fiji currency of £3l per ton.

Officials of the CSR Co. in Fiji and Fiji sugar cane growers were trying in March to work out a price to be paid in future to Fiji cane growers—mostly Indian peasant farmers.

It is unlikely that a price will be fixed until the present agreement with cane growers expires in May but the Company has prepared an estimate based on 7.1 tons of sugar cane to one ton of sugar.

On this basis the price received by the grower for cane is likely to be 45/4 per ton in any year when the Colony’s pro duction of sugar is 120,000 tons or less of sugar, 46/3 a ton when production for the year is 130,000 tons, and 47 2 a ton when 140,000 tons or more are pro duced.

Prices for the Nausori area are usually lower than in other sugar growing dis tricts in the Colony, because of a lower sweetness of cane. The prices paid at the Nausori mill under the latest terms offered by the Company would probably be about 43/-, 44/- and 45/- a ton for cane.

The average price of cane at all Fiji mills in 1948, the last year for which complete figures are available, was 35/- a ton.