MANURE COSTS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 56, Issue 32927, 29 October 1947, Page 6

MANURE COSTS

USE OF PAPER CONTAINERS PROTEST IN THE HOUSE “DUTY SHOULD BE REDUCED” There was a subsidy of £95,000 for fertiliser bags, cornsacks and woolpacks, stated Mr A. S. Sutherland, M.P. for Hauraki, speaking on the estimates in the House of Representatives recently. For a long time there had been a shortage of jute. The Supply Department on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture had entered into an arrangement to take 7,000,000 paper containers for holding superphosphate from France. The Supply Department’s commission would .be 2i per cent, on paper bags against an importer’s commission on jute sacks of one per cent. ‘On the full importation of 7,000,000 paper bags the Supply Department would receive £11,296 10s lOd and at 24 bags to the ton the increase in the cost of fertilisers would be about 15s a ton.

The customs’ duty on the paper bags would be 67 3-8 per cent, against a primage duty of three per cent, on jute sacks. Raw materials for use in the manufacture of fertilisers were duty-free. The Customs Department would collect £221,886 duty on the paper containers compared with £9875 for jute sacks of the same value, he said. There was a difference of over one-fifth of a million pounds that the Government was going to grab on the paper containers. France had been given a good deal over wool and a reciprocal arrangement should be made in connection with fertiliser bags.

There would be an additional loss in that the farmer would have 12 jute sacks left from a ton of fertiliser supplied in jute bags, whereas he would have nothing left when he used the paper bags. They would be valueless. The 12 jute sacks were almost worth a new suit of clothes. It was time that the department went into the question of reducing that high duty of 67 3-8 per cent., Mr Sutherland stated. It was' a scandalous position, and something should be done as it was an unfair charge against the farmer who was trying to produce more for Britain.