Down About £10

Free Copra Price is Down About £10

London, May 17.

THERE has beep a fall of about £lO Stg. per ton in copra and coconut oil quotations during ;;he month.

Since mid-April, copra has fallen from £94 Stg. c.i.f. European port ,:o about £B5. Philippines copra has Tallen from 275 to 210 US dollars.

Coconut oil, top Ceylon grade, is iiuoted from £l2B per ton, May- Uune shipment, down to £llB for Straits oil, in bulk. Quotes for these .ines, a year ago, were £9B and £B5 :3tg. respectively.

Under the MOF contract the South Pacific planters are getting !i65 Stg. per ton f.o.b. (less local de ductions) —which is equal to about ;78 Stg. per ton, c.i.f.

P-Ng Stabilisation Fund

Everyone apears to have forgotten ibout the Papua-New Guinea Copra Stabilisation Fund, built up by the Australian Government out of com mlsory deductions from sales of :opra made by planters in Papua md New Guinea. Those deductions till are going on, and the fund low is well over £1,500,000. Under danters’ pressure, the Australian Minister indicated months ago that le will give some indication of rtiat is to be done ultimately with he Fund, but there has been no tatement.

Some legal opinions hold that the loney is the property of the plant rs who produced the copra, and le Government legally cannot with old it from them.

Fiji, Too

The Fiji Government takes £lO er ton from the proceeds of copra 'oduced by Fijian natives, and puts i into a Fund, to be used on any jvelopment or welfare project for ie Fijians that is approved by a evelopment Fund Board. The und, in May, had reached £217,216.

Australian Move Against

Smoke-Dried

BECAUSE of oversea complaints p against smoke-dried copra (from which it is practically impossible get an edible oil), Australia has vised the prices payable by the >pra Marketing Board at all ain Papua-New Guinea ports, as am July 1, thus (per ton): r ow Dried New Rate Old Rate Hot Air .. £7O .. .. £69/5/- 3un (FMS) £69/5/- .. £69/5/-

Smoked .. £66/10/- .. £6B/5/-

Hates at Kokopo are 17/6 less.

Hot-air-dried thus is raised 15/r ton, while smoke-dried comes wn by 35/-. :t is probable that a similar move ainst smoke dried will be made in ler Territories.

Record Cold in Port Moresby

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Port Moresby, June 1.

ON the morning of May 28 the temperature in Port Moresby dropped to 58.1 degrees, an all time official low for the district. It was 17 degrees below the normal for Port Moresby.

The recording was made a few minutes before 6 a.m., and cold water showers were not popular that morning.

There was a foretaste of cool

weather earlier in the week, on May 26, when the early morning temperature slipped to 61.6 degrees.

Both were a fair way below the previous cool weather record of 64 degrees on June 11, 1923.

Up in the hills at Koitaki a re sident reported the recent May 28 temperature as around 49 degrees.

II Father P. Pingleton, of the Roman Catholic Mission in Guadal canal, Solomons, returned recently to his station, after furlough. He is a brother of Jack Fingleton, former cricket star.