SUGAR INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 56, 7 March 1930, Page 9

SUGAR INDUSTRY

WORLD'S OVER-PRODUCTION

PROBLEM FOR WEST INDIES

British Official Wireless. EUGBY, sth March. Viscount Elibank (Conservative), in tho House of Lords, urged tho publication of the report of the Commission which inquired iuto tho condition of the West Indian sugar industry. He complained that tho Chancellor of the Exchequer would not state his policy on this question. Lord Passficld, Secretary for tho Colonies, said he was unable to reveal the secrets of the Chancellor's Budget. He could say nothing about the policy of the Government on this question, save to repeat the assurance that so long as the tax on sugar remained there would be no abolition of preferonce. 'Ho yielded to no one in his estimate of the gravity of tho situation in all the sugar-producing colonies. Lord Passfield pointed out that overr production of sugar throughout the world amounted to between one million and two million tons. Tho difficulties of the West Indian planters, therefore, wore not only due to apprehension about British preference being withdrawn when tho. Chancellor made his Budget statement on 14th April. T)\o position was such that it might not be within tho power of tho Government to find a remedy. There "was no hope of persuading the Chancellor to bridge tho enormous gap between tho world price of sugar and the cost of production in the West Indies and Mauritius. The Government was not only ready but eager to give any assistance which might be practicable to enable West Indian growers to reduce the costs of production, but there seemed to be little possibility of so reducing the costs as to enable them to produce at the world price at the present time. Until the Government had come' to a decision as to what it was going to do it would not publish the report of the Commission.