'The Middle Eastern question or some political problems of Indian defence' [‎51r] (106/616)

NEW CUSTOMS REGULATIONS 69
Most of the custom-houses were farmed out by the
Central Government, or administered by local chiefs
subject to certain remittances to Teheran. The enter
prising farmer of one custom-house frequently en
deavoured to attract trade to his own port by offering
to admit goods below the treaty rate, and in many
places these reductions or rebates had in the course
of time acquired a semi-legal sanction by mere pre
scription. On the other hand, as the foreign trader,
when once his goods were landed in Persia, was to
some extent protected against the exaction of transit
dues and octrois, he was often placed in a better
position than the Persian importer. M. Naus proposed
to do away with these abuses by abolishing altogether
the old transit dues and octrois on internal as well as on
foreign trade, subject to a small transportation tax
of 22 shahis, or less than 5^. per load on foreign goods
for or from the interior; and at the same time he
undertook to increase the legitimate revenue of the
Treasury by insisting upon the uniform payment of the
full 5 per cent, duty at every port or land frontier
station on the value of all imports and exports. The
reforms laid down by M. Naus were adopted by the
Persian Government with such unwonted promptitude
as to suggest very powerful outside backing, and within
the next twelve months the event had already justified
his most sanguine prognostications; for, while both
internal and foreign trade was relieved of the old
irregular imposts and benefited by the uniformity of the
new system, the net revenue yielded by the Customs in
1901 amounted to about 1,600,000 tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. , or nearly
^320,000, as against little more than three-fifths of that
sum under the farming system.