Buy Your Peanuts In Rabaul

If you want to live on pumpkin tips, sweet potatoes, taro, bananas and peanuts, it is obvious (according to figures recently released by the PNG Statistician) that you will be far better off in Rabaul than in the other territory towns. You will probably also be far better off than people in many of the other Pacific Islands.

March quarter retail prices show that in Rabaul pumpkin tips retailed at 5.4 c per lb (7.3 c in Port Moresby); sweet potatoes at 2.1 c; taro at 4.7 c (10.6 c per lb in Moresby); bananas at 3.8 c per lb (twice as much in Moresby); and peanuts at 16.2 c per lb (a whopping 48.4 c in Port Moresby).

When it comes to imported food, Rabaul is sometimes a cent or two higher than Moresby—due to freight—but all of these goods, mostly imported from Australia, are at exorbitant prices in relation to the low wages of the average Papuan and New Guinean. That übiquitous article that universally makes the taro, the stringy yam, the sago, the manioc, the sweet potato go down—to wit, the 12 oz can of corned beef —costs about 62c in Port Moresby, 61c in Lae, 63c in Rabaul, 59c in Madang and 66c in Goroka.

Gone are the days, but still well remembered, when the same article always cost 1/- (10c) across any trade-store counter. The present extra ordinary price for the same lowly article should make PNG get cracking on that beef industry and fast.

In the unessential pleasure department what Port Moresby gains on the swings it loses on the roundabouts. A carton of 2 doz stubbies (small bottles) of beer costs $6.34 in Port Moresby; $6.43 in Rabaul.

Cigarettes at 35c for 20 and black stick tobacco at approx 10c a stick are the same in both places but you can chew a pound of betel nut in Rabaul for 10.7 cents. The same pleasure in Port Moresby, will cost you 34.5 cents.