Coll 6/19 'Arabia: (Saudi Arabia) Hejaz-Nejd Annual Report.' [‎254v] (509/540)

36
118. The claim just mentioned was lor the value of arms and ammunition
to the value of some £31,500 supplied by the Government oi India in 19!29, as a
matter of urgency and without a commercial agreement, in order to assist the
King to cope with his rebels. A settlement had frequently been pressed tor.
When the matter was again taken up in the summer, Ibn Sand had been induced
to promise payment of the £10,000 due under the Biscoe agreement of January
This money was procured by borrowing from the Dutch Bank in Jedda and
Fuad Bey begged ad misericordiam for a postponement of the Indian claim on
grounds of financial stringency and on the strength of the assurance mentioned
above. This delay was accorded, but a letter agreeing to it, if a firm undertaking
could be given that the payment would be completed by the 28th February, 1931,
remained unanswered. Tire Eastern Telegraph Company had similar difficulty
in obtaining settlement of their cable account with the Government, and at the
end of the year they were owed about £5,000 for a period of eight months,
although their agreement provides for a monthly settlement. Messrs.
Gellatly Hankey and Company, Limited, had constant trouble over the settlement
of outstanding debts. At the end of the year they were owed on various accounts
nearly £13,000 plus £17,000, of which payment had been made and accepted in
the form of drafts on the customs, drafts which could only be realised on the
market at a heavy loss, but which could be worked off gradually by tendering
them in payment of duty on imported goods.
119. The position in regard to these British claims is an index of the genei al
financial situation. By the end of the year the King was similarly indebted to
the Dutch. He was said to owe the Qusaibi family in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. about
£80,000, and to be heavily indebted to the rich Governor of Jedda also. On the
other hand, when it is necessary to pay on the nail, Abdullah Suleiman contrives
to produce the money, as in the case of the £40,000 paid for the Cracow cargo at
the end of August (see paragraph 85).
120. None of the sums mentioned are spectacular for a Government. The
evil feature of the situation is that dealings so comparatively small already
necessitate all the shifts which are so familiar in the history of oriental finance.
Drafts on customs are issued so freely as to have become unrealisable in cash
except at a heavy discount. Financial stringency was aggravated at the end
of the year by the prospect of a poor pilgrimage in 1931, and the revenue which
was expected to accrue from it would appear to have been discounted in a sense
before the end of December by the device of hurrying the first arrivals of pilgrims,
mostly Javanese, who come early, through to Medina, in order to obtain payment
of the heavy tax imposed on those who include that place in the pilgrimage.
Official salaries were heavily in arrear at the end of the year. Government
money was so short that even the wages of chauffeurs could not be paid, and as a
good many of them are Sudanese and Somalis, this became a matter of concern
to the British Legation.
121. Another of the difficulties which beset the Government was that of
maintaining, even approximately, the balance of the silver currency, which is
supposed to be fixed at the rate of 10 riyals to the gold standard of currency,
which is the English sovereign. This, however, did not become acute until earlv
in 1931. ^
122. It is impossible to say whether, in the conditions of the country, the
financial situation could be completely restored by better management or not.
So far as the Hejaz is concerned, the writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. of the “Survey of Internationai
Affairs ” for 1925 (Volume I, p. 289) suggests that it is almost indispensible that
the profit of the pilgrim trade should he supplemented by some subsidy. On the
other hand, the manager of the Dutch Bank in Jedda'told Sir A. Ryan early
in 1931, and he was speaking not as an optimist, but as one suffering'from the
general difficulty of getting money from the Government, that it should be
possible to produce a balanced budget. He put the total of the floating debt at
not more than £500,000, and, according to his information, the budget figures in
1926 had been : Revenue £3,437,862; expenditure £3,300,314. Out of the latter
amount £1,919,141 was stated to be for the use of the King, a term which would
probably cover his subsidies to the tribes. None of the figures can be Guaranteed
nor is it clear whether they are for the Hejaz only or for the whole oAbn Saud’s