Indian Trade Enquiry : Reports on Rice. (Murray. es. net.)—
This volume of reports prepared by the Imperial Institute Committee for India, at the request of the Secretary of State for India, deals fully with the trade in Indian rice and with the production and uses of rice. We sometimes forget that "rice is the most important of all cereals used as human food." India alone produces more than half the world's rice crop, apart from China, and India, Siam, and Indo-China are responsible for three- fourths of the world's export trade in rice. The object of the Committee was to see how the Indian trade could be encouraged. It was found that large quantities of rice were exported from India to Germany or Holland, milled there, and then imported into England and cold at a lower price than Indian rice milled in England. The German and Dutch mills were said to he more favourably situated than the English mills, and the Continental port charges were lower. It is to be feared that the Committee's recommendation, dated in 1917, that the British port charges should be reduced is out of the question. Since then the dockers hare received such high wages that the port charges have been increased.
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