FINANCIAL NOTES
A TALE OF Two QUOTAS REGULATING Committees which control two of the world's vital raw materials, tin and sugar, have in the past week been taking steps to deal with a threatened shortage of their com- modities. The International Tin Committee was faced with the problem of providing more tin, so as to prevent a runaway price, and of still keeping supplies a little below current demand, so that the price could advance to the critical figure of £230 per ton, at which level the buffer pool will begin to sell its 15,000 tons of tin. It looks as though they were going to be successful: they raised the quota from 40 per cent. to 45 per cent., releasing about Soo tons of tin per month as from June 3oth, and at the same time an important lender of tin, popu- larly supposed to be the buffer pool, stopped lending. Thus the price of tin continued to rise and has passed £229, while the amount which it is necessary to pay to borrow tin for three months, which had been steady at £2 los. per ton for several weeks, rose to over £4. In effect, the Committee say : " If you want tin immediately, instead of borrowing it at £2 'as. per ton, you shall buy it at £230." In time, probably, the consumers will.
The International Sugar Council were faced with a much more complex problem; they wanted to prevent a temporary shortage of sugar in the next few months, which may be a time of political crises, and they knew that after September next the position would be reversed and there would be a surplus of sugar. They want higher stocks now, and they want to avoid unremunerative prices in the autumn. They also have a much less flexible machine to work with; the weapon of quota reductions is not open to them, and if re- striction is needed it has to be by individual arrangement with each restricted country. They solved, or partly solved, the immediate shortage by obtaining a release of 153,000 metric tons of additional sugar immediately for the British Empire. They are now engaged in the second part of the problem— that of obtaining voluntary surrenders of an amount, stated to be about 450,000 tons of sugar, for the year beginning Septem- ber 1st, but it is not yet certain that a completely satisfactory solution of the problem will be found or, indeed, that it can be found at all along those lines.
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