Appendix E.
REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF IMPORTS AND EXPORTS FOR THE YEAR 1925.
I. LIQUOR.
The net revenue collected was $1,140,925.07 as compared with $1,229,262.66 in 1924.
The collection of duty on liquor of Chinese manufacture still remained very unsatisfactory. The proposals made for revising the law and the regulations governing the collection of duty are still under discussion.
The adequate control of the Chinese liquor trade from the point of view of revenue collection is still extremely difficult. Departments issuing the various licences have now agreed to consult this department before issuing new licences, and this will tend to check the indiscriminate issue of licences, which has been the practice for a long time.
A new set of regulations for the control of distilleries, based on those in force in England and Bengal, has been drawn up and is still under consideration. The present regulations do not admit of any control whatever to be exercised over the output of distilleries, with the result that distilleries have been able to evade the payment of duty by simply making false returns as to their output. Investigations into the methods used in Chinese distilleries have been continued during the year, and the impossibility of exercising any effective Revenue control under the present system amply proved.
Frauds by distilleries.
Four distilleries were convicted of fraud on the Revenue, and several distilleries in the New Territory were cautioned; they had been for a long time making false entries of their output in their books, in many cases approximately the correct entry had apparently been made at first, so that the amount of spirit found on the premises directly after the distillation had been completed for the day, was always correct, but before the book was taken to the Police Station to be checked and duty paid, the Chinese characters already entered were very cleverly altered, generally so as to read about one half or one third less than the amount originally entered. Steps have been taken to meet this type of fraud by the adoption of a simple system of notation which can be read by Europeans as well as Chinese, and new books have been designed and issued to facilitate the new system.