Ext 5001/41 'PERSIA – INTERNAL (Miscellaneous despatches).' [‎87r] (173/248)

crops in certain important areas have been assessed by special survey officials
working under the supervision of our consular liaison officers. In Khuzistan,
where the harvest has already been gathered, landlords have undertaken to deliver
some 8,500 tons, at a price which has been fixed at 4,000 rials a ton with a view
to discouraging the smuggling of grain into Iraq.
18. The cultivators’ share of the crop has been excluded from the scope of
tie official collection scheme, but the Persian Government is hoping to purchase
a large proportion of it either directly or through commission agents, making use
1 where possible of sugar, tea, cloth and other barter goods in part payment. In
" some districts, especially where the Government nas previously experienced
difficulty in enforcing undertakings, arrangements have also been set on foot to
buy up the landlords’ surplus, not by enforcing the undertakings system, but by
means of ordinary civil contracts between the Government and individual land
lords, or commission agents empowered to purchase from them, with the sole
proviso that the contracted quantities from any given area shall be greater than
the amounts which would have been due under the legal undertaking. Our
consular liaison officer in Shiraz has arranged contracts of this kind for the
delivery of 30,000 tons of wheat and barley, and negotiations are in hand for the
whole of the surplus crop in the Sistan area in East Persia to be bought up by
a reliable British-Indian commission agent who made successful purchases on
Government behalf in the same area last year.
19. Although the exceptionally good spring rains have been offset in many
areas by indifferent sowings, it seems likely that sufficient grain will be harvested
this summer to remove the two principal incentives to hoarding : fear of scarcity
and hope of speculative profit. At the same time the heavy crops in Iraq may be
. expected to diminish the loss of grain by smuggling. It seems, in fact, reasonable
to hope that the Ministry of Supply, aided in the provinces by our consular
liaison officers, on whom it has become increasingly dependent, as well as by
the officers now being lent from the Syrian grain purchasing organisation, of
i whom two have already arrived, will succeed in collecting sufficient grain to feed
. the towns of Persia next year without recourse to Allied help. Some fears have
' {been expressed that grain collection will be adversely affected by the introduction
of the new income tax law, on the assumption that landlords will refuse to declare
their real surpluses in order to avoid these being used as the basis of tax
assessment. •
y
I
T rans'port.
20 . It becomes more and more apparent that this is the bottle-neck in most
forms of economic activity. During the period under review the contact between
the Allied supply authorities and the Persian administration has increased by
the setting up of new committees whose scope it is to see how best the needs of
local agriculture, industry and trade can be met. In each case transport has
been found to be the primary need. Contact between these committees (on which
the Millspaugh Mission is represented) and the Road Transport Board has
enabled many transport problems to be solved. The latter has worked contin
uously, in contact with the Persian Government Road Transport Department
whose activities it directs. As the control of motor transport tightened, the
expected opposition from merchants and the transport trade arose; it was most
virulent, and so general that even the Government and the Prime Minister showed
signs of joining it. The Anglo-American authorities, however, presented a firm
front against this attempt to break up the control, by threatening to cut off
supplies of new vehicles and tyres if the control was sabotaged. The attacks were
then concentrated against the British director of the Road Transport Department,
whose personal reputation was involved; and a situation has arisen which makes
it necessary to replace him as soon as a suitable successor can be found. In
spite of these vicissitudes it has been possible to introduce a semblance of organ
isation into road transport and to divert transport from unessential work to
the task of collecting cereals, of fighting locusts, and of carrying essential
foodstuffs, fuel for industrial and civilian consumption, &c.
21. The Road Transport Department now has about 500 lease-lend motor
trucks and 1,000 contracted motor trucks. In one month it carried 25,000 tons
of goods to 423 destinations, half being for the Government and half for mer
chants, and half of the goods carried being foodstuffs. Still more vehicles are
necessary to fulfil plans for the collection of the cereal harvest, to supply the
needs of industry (especially the sugar industry, which has a heavy programme
of sugar-beet transport) and to distribute elementary commodities such as tea,
sugar and cotton piece-goods throughout the country.
[43—41J B 3