Rubber Planters At Last

That Tariff Board Inquiry

An Announcement For The

After years of inquiries, submissions and arguments, the Papuan rubber industry in October finally learned something to its advantage on tariffs.

TITHE Australian Government an- X nounced that it had rejected Tariff Board recommendations that Territory rubber should be ad mitted to Australia free of customs duty, but — • It would impose a duty of 4d a lb (an increase of 2d), on all rubber, other than that from Papua- New 7 Guinea, which would remain at 2d a lb. • It might allow some overseas rubber in at 2d a lb as a concession, but only on condition that the available Territory output of natural rubber was sold at a satisfactory price.

This “satisfactory price” would be fixed at the world price, plus 3d a lb, when the world price of crude rubber No. 1 RSS grade was 18d or less a lb. As the world price in creased beyond 18d a lb, the margin of 3d would be reduced by a farth ing a lb for each Id a lb increase in the rubber price.

Thus, when the world price was 30d or more a lb, the price for Papuan rubber would be the same.

The Australian announcement also said that all crude rubber entering Australia would in future be exempt from primage. (Papuan rubber has been free of primage and rubber from elsewhere has had a primage of approximately 2d a lb).

The Papuan rubber industry has always had an up-and-down exist ence, and it was last in difficulties a few years after the war.

A world authority on rubber, Mr.

C. E. T. Mann, made a report on the position in 1952, and the Aus tralian Tariff Board made an in vestigation at the end of 1954 sitting, for the first time, in the Territory.

But this assistance was not obtained without a great deal of hard work on the part of the planters and the Territories’ Department, and even as it was being arranged new changes kept coming along, so that it was difficult to know just what the future of the industry was go ing to be from one month to another.

The Korean war pushed rubber prices out of the doldrums, but the approach to the Tariff Board was bogged down because of Australia’s commitments under the GATT agreement. Marketing arrangements in Australia twice broke down.

When the Tariff inquiry was finally

made, nobody could find out any thing about its recommendations.

The whole report appeared to have been shelved, and although there were some complaints from the planters, nobody worried about it as much as they might have once, be cause in the interval the position had changed again.

In the last year or two the

Papuan rubber industry has been ii a position that is (to quote on planter), “not good, but then, nc bad, either”, which is just anothe way of saying things have bee; pretty good.

Nevertheless, in the backgrouni has always been the problem c what the future would hold for a: industry that had no guarantee: market in Australia.

The latest announcement —giving as it does, news of what has hap pened to that Tariff report—ha been received warmly enough by thi planters.

The view is that the report, an; alterations to primage and impon duty, give an indication that th Commonwealth realises the import ance of the Papuan rubber industr and the need for an assured marke: But all aspects have yet to b looked at.