SUGAR SHORTAGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2137, 8 June 1920, Page 3

SUGAR SHORTAGE.

NO EVIDENCE OE HOARDING

Sugar is again very short', and purchasers arc lucky if they can get it, even in one or two pound doles. Allegations are freely made by an aggrieved public against retailers of hoarding for a prospective rise, hut according to the Bonn,! of 'trade, there is nothing in such rumours. Investigations a.re made regularly by officers of the Board, and no case has yet been proved of hoarding which might constitute an offence against the Statutes. There appears, however, to he no doubt that private consumers in different parts of the Dominion have pul by small stores —a bag or so —especially in the country districts, against the possibility of an absolute sugar famine.' There is no evidence that grocers are doing anything'bnt carry on with stocks, as it were, from hand-to-mouth. Shipping difficulties and a genuine shortage of supplies 4 are the source of the trouble. A recent visitor to the Colonial Sugar Cods refinery at Auckland could find no indication there of a large surplus set hside speculatively for a rise. Sugar is still about as cheap in New Zealand as in any part: of the world—certainly far cheaper than in Australia, where the cane i< grown and the sugar refined by the very same company which operates in New Zealand. The fptestion of a rise in price is , no doubt, exercising the minds of the authorities, and the public certainly has to face that possibility in the near future. —I’ost.