BRITISH NEW GUINEA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 109, 8 April 1926, Page 7

BRITISH NEW GUINEA.

EX-ENEMY PLANTATIONS

LONDON, April 7. The Financial Times understands that a tender of £2,000,000 has been made to the Commonwealth Government on behalf of an influential Bntish syndicate, comprising important shipping and financial interests ,lor the British New Guinea plantations expropriated from tho enemy in war time, also a tender of £2,150,000 from another source, which is believed to be acting on behalf of a German group. The paper adds that should the properties be acquired 1 by the British sjndicate, flotation into a public company is likely to follow, in which case the undertaking will be a long way the largest plantation proposition of the kind ever presented for public support. The biggest existing company of a similar nature is the Anglo-Dutch plantations of Java, owning 212,024 acres, of which 68,878 acres are under cultivation. The writer gives the total area of New Guinea properties as 480,000 acres, of which the area under cultivation is unknown, but it was estimated in 1920 that the aggregate value of the properties amounted to about £4,000,000.—A. and N.Z. cable.