Talks On Phosphate Royalties

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31151, 30 August 1966, Page 18

Talks On Phosphate Royalties

fjr.g. Prctr A««oeiaiion)

WELLINGTON, August 29. Talks began this afternoon in Wellington with a view to allocating to the people of the area a greater share of the proceeds from mining the rich phosphate deposits on Ocean Island.

Representatives have come from Britain, the Gilbert and

F'lice Island colony and the i«'»nd in the Fiii group to which the Ocean Island popu-

lation was moved about 20 years ago. Subsistence on Ocean Island is no longer feasible. The Banabans are now living on a relatively fertile island and draw on a royalty of about 4s a ton on the phosphate taken from what used to be their homeland.

The talks are expected to take till Friday. Their aim is to reach agreement with representatives of the British, Australian and New Zealand Governments on a higher rate of royalty and a higher tax in favour of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Administration than the present £1 a ton.

Britain's delegation to the

talks is led by two men from the Commonwealth Office, which now administers the Gilbert and Ellice colony. They are Mr Trafford Smith and Mr K. C. Christofas. The Gilbert and Ellice islanders and the Banabans at the talks total 10, including advisers. Ocean Island is in the Gilbert and Ellice group, hence the latter’s direct interest. The British delegation leaders today explained this background of the talks, which are unrelated to the talks on new financial and other arrangements in respect of nhosphate mined at Nauru. Those talks have developed an interim arrangement through two sets of discus-

sions which are to be resumed.

Only coconuts and little grass grew in the coral atolls of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, said Mr Smith. They were extremely poor and considerably over-populated. To export copra would deprive the islanders of food.

The only economic asset of any magnitude was the Ocean Island phosphate and it was a major interest to draw the maximum revenue from it, he said.

Allowing for all aspects of revenue, the total benefits are about 28s a ton, of which about 4s goes to inhabitants of Gilbert and Ellice Islands and about 4s to the Banabans.