Page 599.
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Page 599
Page 599
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at KongPage po61097es at Urambo and 420P,ago 600refs1997 the Southern Province. By the end of 1950 there will be cleared · 90,000 acres at Kongwa, 90,000 acres at Urambo and 22,000 acres in the Southern Province. In other words, clearing has already been completed at Kongwa and will be completed in twelve months' time at Urambo. From then onwards the whole clearing effort of the Corporation will be concentrated in the Southern Province which the agricultural experts believe to be much the most promising of the three areas.
5.
The Corporation's programme shows a sharp reduction in the rate at which they will require to borrow money. Their borrowing in the current year (ending 31st March, 1950) is estimated at £10,650,000 compared with £13,350,000 in 1948-49, and £8,000,000 in 1947-48. Their further require- ments are:
£
1950-51 1951-52 1952-53
1953-54
4,500,000 4,000,000 3,300,000 800,000
In addition a further £3,000,000 are earmarked for reserves to cover the risk of losses on agricultural operations on the newly cleared lands during the development years of the scheme to 1954. The greater part of the expenditure from 1950 onwards will be for wages and local materials. The Corporation's programme therefore fulfils a further condition which the Chancellor invited me urgently to request them to provide for: it provides, that is to say, for a very rapid fall in the rate of investment of money. This rate of investment falls from £14 million a year in the first quarter of this year to £4.5 million during 1950/51. Indeed, it is only possible to come down next year to less than one-third of the peak annual investment of last year because the main capital works are at length almost completed.
Is the Corporation's plan feasible?
6.
Technical Problems. I asked my officials to examine, in so far as they were able, the technical bases of the new plan. They report that there seems no reason why the development programme submitted by the Corporation should not be achieved within the time allowed. It is true that the programme calls for a rapid increase in the annual extent of clearing in the Southern Province where there has so far been least experience, and one naturally remembers the contrast between expectation and experience in the clearing of Kongwa. But there are substantial grounds for believing that these disappointments will not be repeated. There is available the accumulated wealth of experience at Kongwa, and at Urambo (where vegetation conditions are very similar to those in the Southern Province and where clearing has been proceeding for the last six months at the estimated speed and cost): there has been a natural increase of efficiency in the organisation and deployment of tractor operations: there have been exhaustive surveys of the initial 20,000 acres to be cleared and there is to be selective and not block clearing: communications in the shape of the railway (which is now running on the essential 90 mile stretch between the temporary port and the area being cleared) pipe-line, etc. have been built up in advance and the water supplies seem assured. Of course, there are still risks as there must inevitably be with any large-scale enterprise of this kind in tropical Africa. Unexpecteges may arise, but whatages600 of 097 that in putting forward their proposals the Corporation have been at pains fully to examine the doubtful and difficult factors and to frame their plans on realistic assumptions.
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