For one thing, as long as Burma was part of India there was of course no Customs barrier, and free trade between the two countries has been continued for the first three years after separation by the Indo-Burma Trade Agreement, so that Burma is assured of an open market for her rice in India. Also the population of India grows faster than her production of foodstuffs, and the demand steadily increases, and Burma has an advantage in freight to India over Siam and Indo-China.
Similar' advantages apply to a great extent to Ceylon and Malaya which remain steady markets, but, other markets are far less satisfactory. The war upset the Europe market and it has never recovered; rice is more of a luxury than a staple food in European countries at any time, and the increased production of Spain and Italy, and the Customs. barriers which economic nationalism has erected in nearly every European country have seriously affected the trade.
Japan, which used to take considerable quantities, has become almost self-supporting, and the Netherland East Indies have converted so much of their sugar-growing land to paddy-land that their demand has gone down to less than half of what it used to be. For this the Indian Government is largely responsible by its policy of encouraging sugar cultivation in India, with the result that her oil in the shape of kerosene and petrol and only one by-product, candles, is exported elsewhere. The great bulk of the teak also goes 10 India, and the remainder mostly to England for ship-building. What little teak is used in China appears to be Siamese teak which is not as good quality as Burmese teak. China also takes none of Burma's large exports of lead and zine.
The statistics show separately the trade with Hongkong and with China, the former being reckoned as Empire Trade, though there is little doubt that most of it merely passes through Hongkong from or to the interior of China. In the last five years exports to Hongkong have fallen from Rs. 51 lakhs to Rs. 6 lakhs, and exports to China from Rs. 292 lakhs to Rs. 64 lakhs. (A lakh is or roughly 120,000 dollars at present rátes of exchange). Of these exports about three-quarters are rice, the only other export of importance being raw cotton. The average amount of raw cotton taken by China is about 10,000 bales, but in 1933-34 it rose to 62,000 bales, valued at Rs, 5 lakhs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.