RAW TOBACCO

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 85, 12 April 1940, Page 6

RAW TOBACCO

PRICE OF SEASON’S LEAF SAME AS LAST YEAR [ Per Frees A«wociation. J WELLINGTON, April 11. The purpose of the Board of Trade (raw tobacco price) regulations. 1940. notification of the issue of which was contained in the Gazette published tonight, was briefly explained by the Minister of Industries and Commerce, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, in an interview. He said these followed the lines ol similar regulations passed each year since 1936. The regulations fixed the minimum price below which tobacco leaf could not be sold or purchased. He said that for the 1936 season the minimum was fixed at Is a pound, but in 1937 and the following seasons the minimum was increased to Is 2d a pound. For the 1940 crop, the buying season for which would commence very shortly, the minimum had again been fixed at Is 2d a pound. “The purpose of the regulat.ons is to prevent the sale and purchase of leaf at very low and uneconomic prices,” the Minister said. “The regulations are designed primarily in the interest of, and for the protection of. growers, but they have also been of definite advantage to manufacturers, inasmuch as they have protected them from unfair competition which would otherwise have been created by the sale of manufactured tobacco and cigarettes made from leaf bought at very low prices.” As in the previous regulations, there is a clause authorising the Minister. in any case where he considers it proper so to do, to permit the sale and purchase of tobacco at a price less than the price fixed by the regulations. The object of this clause is to enable leaf which is unfit for manufacture into tobacco and cigarettes and which would otherwise be rejected and destroyed to be used for manu- : fix ture into insecticides. The regulations remain in force till, and including. March 31. 1941.