RUSSIA'S POLICY OF PROGRESSION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 7349, 31 December 1902, Page 3

RUSSIA'S POLICY OF PROGRESSION.

Wresting Trade From Britain

{Received To-day, at 12.55 a.vi.)

London, December 30,

Persia has guaranteed to the Eussian Bank, at Teheran, the right to construct a road from Fablig to Kazbin, stopping the importation of English goods to Azerbijan and to Northern Persia.

[The chief cities of Persia are Teheran (pop. 250,000), Tabriz (180,000), Ispahan (80,000), Meshed, and Shiraz. The principal ports are Bunder Abbas, Linjah, and Bushire on the Persian Gulf, and Enzeli, Meshed-i-Sar. and Bender-i-Gez on the Caspian. The chief products of. the country are silk, grain, fruits, gums, opium, carpets, and tobacco. Dried fruits are exported in large quantities as food for the Eussian peasants, and Eussian money is being used to stimulate the culture of cotton. Wool is exported to Bombay and Baghdad. The Government obtained from the Imperial Bank of Persia in '92 a loan of £500,000, repayable in eighty half-yearly instalments. But arrangements were made in 1900 to repay this in favour of a Eussian loan; but the Persian Loan Bank, most of the shares of which are held by the Eussian State Bank, by Imperial command, undertook to advance a 5-per-cent. loan of 22,500,000 roubles, guaranteed by all the Customs duties of Persia except those of Farsistan and the ports of the Persian Gulf. It was stipulated that Persia should pay off all other and previous pecuniary obligations, that ia, the £500,000 7-per-cent. Anglo-Persian loan of '92, and this was shortly afterwards done. The imports and exports of 1900 were estimated to amount to about £8,600,000. About 56 per cent, of this is trade with ttussia, and 24 per cent, with Great Britain. A new line of steamers carrying Eussian goods from Odessa to Bushire, Bandar Abbas, and other ports of the Persian Gulf, commenced running 'last year. This was looked upon as the commencement of a definite attempt to wrest from England her commercial supremacy in the Gulf.]