Funds bail out planters

The copra market shows no sign of improvement; in fact, the trend m November and December was for prices to fall even further, except where they were propped up by stabilisation or reserve funds. The glut in Europe, where there is a buyer’s market, is the main cause of the continued low prices.

Planters along Fiji’s southern Vanua Levu coast have laid off more than 100 cutters. One estate reported it had not cut copra for two months.

That estate, however, was fortunate enough to find a market for whole nuts, and the first shipment was to leave Fiji in December. For obvious reasons, the owner of the estate would not say where he was selling.

Western Samoa should be exper iencing a boom in copra because production for 1971 was expected to reach 17,000 tons, compared with 10,976 tons in 1970. But any benefits from the higher production will be quickly offset by the lower prices.

Mr. H. Thomsen, secretary of the Copra Board of Western Samoa, echoed the feelings of growers throughout the Pacific when he re marked, “We all hope that the situa tion will soon improve”.

New Guinea prices, paradoxically, were higher in December than in the previous month, by $7 a ton, thanks to a lift in the bounty from the stabil isation fund.

In Tonga, prices were reduced by $3.70 a ton in December, but single nuts remained at 1.2 cents. The Ton ga Copra Board said it had no alter

native but to reduce prices because of the depressed state of the market, and because it was virtually imposs ible to predict the future of the market.

In the New Hebrides, after a lift to $53 in November, the price was back to $4B on December. Prices in the BSIP were unchanged in Dec ember.

The price has been reduced by $lO a ton (from January 3) in the US Trust Territory, “because of the continuing decline in world prices, and the possibility of worsening of the West Coast shipping situation”.

The Copra Stabilisation Board chair man, Mr, Eusebio Rechucher, said the board would have spent $278,000 of its reserve funds by January 2 to help the copra producers to main tain a stable price.

The reduction date, January 3, was fixed to allow producers to earn as much as possible before the Christ mas and New Year holidays.

Copra is the second biggest export item in the TT, and was expected to earn about $1.6 million in 1971.

That represented a harvest of about 12,000 tons.

NEW HANGAR.—NZ contractors Colson Builders (Cook Islands) Ltd. have almost completed the founda tions for the new hangar to house the internal Cook Islands airline’s planes at Rarotonga. The hangar will have facilities for Air New Zealand’s needs, a deep freeze and a mess.