PORT OF ENTRY.

Patea Mail, 12 August 1880, Page 2

PORT OF ENTRY.

The Secretary of Customs, Mr Seed, has written as follows to the Committee appointed at the recent public meeting in Patea : “ Gentlemen, —I have been directed by the Hon. the Uoiniiilssiumsr of Ouaivmio acknowledge your letter of the 6th iast., enclosing a copy of a resolution passed at a public meeting hold for the purpose of urging that bonded warehouses should be allowed at Patea, or tliat the Patea river should be declared a port of entry and a Customs officer be stationed there. “In reply I am to state that the Commissioner fully recognises the growing importance of the port oP Patea as the natural outlet for the produce of an extensive and very fertile district; but ho regrets that in the present financial condition of the colony he cannot sec his way to recommend the Legislature to make provision for the establishment of an additionalj warehousing port, especially as the Government, with a view to retrenchment, have at the present time under consideration the advisability of closing a number of the smaller ports. lam further to state that the experiment of opening Foston as a port has not been sufficiently encouraging to warrant any further increase being made to the already too large number of ports of entry, the cost of collecting the revenue there during the nine months ended on the 31st March last, having amounted to no less than £6B 17s per cent.”