'Administration Reports 1925-1930' [‎57v] (119/418)

14
The imposition, in the spring of 1926, of the Road. Tax on the gross
weights of all imports and exports only served to hamper traders, increase
costs, and restrict trade still further. The south had been, relatively to the
North and West, little troubled by the road-toll and octroi {nawaqil) dues
taken at three or four points in the whole region. It now found itself bur
dened with a tax 15 to 20 times heavier in its incidence on trade via the
Gulf : and a tax, which was so carelessly framed in the classification of the
schedule, that trade in certain heavy goods, or goods in heavy receptacles,
was stopped dead.
From March to December 1926, of a budget of 50,000 Tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. for the
Public Works Department in the South (from the coast to the Isfahan
border) only 22,000 Tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. (say £4,400) had been spent, and of that the
office expenses at Shiraz amount to 11,000 Tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. annually. Yet the'
figures in Dr. Millspaugh's 16th quarterly report for Road-tax taken at
Bushire in the first six months of the year were Tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. 201,585 and aceord-
ing to the law, and to the condition made by His Majesty's Government in
accepting it, 50 per cent, of the proceeds were to be spent in the province
where it was collected, or the provinces whose trade was dependent on the
port or frontier post where it was collected.
One remarkable feature of 1926 was the adaptation of routes from
Shiraz to provincial centres, distant 100 to 200 miles, for light passenger
motor traffic, e.g., Fasa, Darab, Jahrun, Lar. The tracks are poor, and
the cost of labour was paid, not by the State, but by the Local towns people,
villagers and property-owners for the most part.
All through the year the local newspapers have lamented the economic
impoverishment of the South, the paucity of exports, dearth of money, and
lack of openings of employment. In this connection the drainage of the
hundreds of thousands of Tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. from the pockets of the South into the
National Treasury in Tehran on account of the sugar monopoly and road
taxes has been severely criticized, not only by the local Press, but by traders
generally: there are not wanting those who predict a general collapse of
trade and the vanishing of liquid capital, if this drainage be continued
many more years, certainly, without the revived opium export the situa
tion and outcry in this respect would have been acute by the end of 1926.
An interesting experiment, with the deliberate object of trying to in
troduce fresh produce for export, has been the engagement by Mirza Ibrahim
Khan Qawam, on a three years' contract, of a British agricultural expert
with experience in Egypt to run a Model Farm, and employ machinery, if
the experiment be starved for capital in its early years, it is bound to be a
failure: and much too depends on the cost of transport to the coast, when
the proposed new crops foreign cotton, sesame, flax, soya, beans and
tobacco—are eventually produced.
The ^reconstruction of the ancient dam on the Pulwar river for the irri^
gation of Ramjird district, where for decades there has been a desolation
of some thirty ruined villages, has got no further owing to the failure of
the Ministry of Imance to propose reasonable terms to the owners of these
pioperties. Complaint is also levelled at this Ministry that there may
occur withm a year or two great damage to their own land-tax interests, as
we as to t e ciops of the people, unless they make an adequate outlay for
the eradication ^ of ^ locust eggs from the soil of districts in Eastern Fars.
, 0 e criticism against the present financial policy of the central
m ee ? ? a ' * n the matter of the proposed Agricultural
furfon lvplnS n . South is not flowed to share in any expendi-
direction allnrl rM- h ^gionalist' resentment shows itself in another
cated Hanf 4 0 complaint of lack of employment for the edu-
officials sent dowr^frn™ ^ feature of j 926 has been the number of subaltern
in the various dpnartr^ f m order to provide them with salaries
various departmental budgets, while local candidates stand no chance.
nal censorshi^ -Despite the continuance of the nomi-
probably is at bottom beneficial in restraining them