“TARANAKI CENTRAL PRESS.” TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1936. THE DUTCH INDIES.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 304, 8 December 1936, Page 4

“TARANAKI CENTRAL PRESS.” TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1936. THE DUTCH INDIES.

It is rather interesting that the Japanese Government should have thought it necessary to deny a report that Japan and Germany had agreed to an allocation of "economic spheres” in the Dutch East Indies. 1 here is nothing to prevent the exporters of two nations from agreeing not to compete against one another in a particular territory or in the sale of specified products. The suggestion to which the Japanese were replying, therefore, must have referred to something other than an ordinary trade agreement, possibly implying that pressure would be brought to bear on the Netherlands to make special concessions. There is probably no extensive area in the world that offers more liberal trading conditions than do the Dutch East Indies. I here is no .discrimination, either in favour of the Mother Country or against foreign nations. It is true that in recent years, owing to the acute depression, some imports have been made subject to quotas, but all nations are treated alike. There is no bar on foreign capital, labour or goods. The tariff is strictly for revenue purposes. Of foreign nations, probably Britain has the largest amount of capital invested, but most of the exporting nations and all the importing ones have their establishments in the group. The export trade used to be worth about two hundred million pounds a year and the import trade about a third less, so that these sixty million people constituted a great market in prosperous times. The slump, however, hit all the islands hard, the exports falling in value to less than seventy million pounds. Ihe chief exports, mineral oils, sugar, rubber and copra, slumped heavily, the decline in sugar, in particular, being tragic. International agreements saved the situation to some extent in rubber and tin, but there could be no saving the sugar industry, which had been developed by scientific culture and research work. Half the sugar plant in Java is said now to be out of operation. At full capacity Java could supply the whole of the open markets in the world, and the restoration of prosperity to the island obviously depends on the removal of restrictions by sugar-using countries, including the lifting of prohibitive tariffs and the provision of the necessary credits. The position will be relieved by the change in the Dutch currency policy, of course, but even so there is no immediate prospects of restoring prosperity to the tea, coffee, tobacco and copra interests. There was at one time a prospect of developing an export trade from New Zealand to the Dutch islands, but as the products likely to be taken arc regarded as luxury lines the present outlook in that direction is not very hopeful.