The Ministry of Finance has issued an order allowing the re-importation, free of duty, of empty beer and soft-drink bottles exported from Japan. Hitherto bottles returned empty from abroad have been subject to Customs duty amounting to 100 per cent. of their value.
The 20,000,000 Japan-made bottles estimated to be lying idle in China are stated to represent an investment of Y.700000 in soda ash imported from abroad to make glass. Elimination of the duty or re-imported "empties" will, it is pointed out, result in an obvious saving in imports of soda ash.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.