File 1283/1913 Pt 5 'MESOPOTAMIA TRADE Issue of new Trade Report' [‎66r] (127/270)

Asas 1 has been able to relieve it of its exportable surplus of
foodstuffs and it has not therefore been necessary to find
J
tonnage for it. Wool has been able to pay the high rates of
freight now ruling^as the world prices have been high; dates
have also been able to find a market at the high prices ren
dered necessary by shortage of tonnage. They' have however been
much handicapped,in spite of the 40000 or 50000 tons that are
■carried away in sailing vessels annually/.That tonnage was a.
material factor is indicated by the fact that some of the food
Controller's purchases of dates last year were not shipped -t
all, whilst the condition of some of those shipped must nave
caused anxiety owing to the lateness of their arrival in ling-
land.
It seems probable that the present rate of exchange
is lively to oe a more serious handicap in the case of ship
ments to the United ningdom than the shortage of tonnage.
There are now in sight a number of ships which will loan ior
England direct and thus the expensive and unsatisfactory pro
cess of transhipment in India or Egypt will be avoided.
One of the great handicaps to trade at the present
moment is the scarcity and cost of labour. Tt is a handicap in
two ways; it limits production and therefore the capacity to
import,and it increases the cost of goods from the moment that
discharge from, the steamer begins till the time that they
reach the consumer either up-country or in-Persia. It m ts
about ten times as much to move goous from the wharf to the
merchants godown in Basrah as it does in Calcutta. The Arab
is not I should say industrious and he is certainly oi an
independant nature; but were he the former and not the latter,
he only exists in Mesopotamia in limited numbers, and it there
fore follows that immigrant labour from the hills or else
where must be encouraged before any very vast schemes of
agricultural production can be carried thro.ugh, i^ith good