In the report you will also see particulars of work already in hand in connection with next year's new planting programme. Under the International Rubber Regulation Committee's'nes planting scheme for 1939, Our estate is entitled to plant up an additional 5 per cent. of its planted area and received planting certificates Covering 93.05 acres for this purpose. The directors decided to take advantage of this opportunity to extend and at the same time ito plant up all the available reserve area, amounting to 195% acres, which will necessitate the purchase of additional planting certificate to cover an area of approximately 102% acres.
In view of the present price of rubber and the new planting programme I have just referred to, the directors consider it inadvisable to proceed, during 1939, with any further replanting and have decided to postpone until 1940 the replanting of the 142 acres, which it had been their inten-lion io undertake during the coming financial year. In any case, the work at present in hand is as much as our Staff'can undertake, and, even to accomplish this, it will be necessary engage an European assistant for a Kamunting where most of the work is being done.
For the first six months of our financial year there was a steady decline in the price of the raw material, and, though. it has recovered somewhat from the low levels reached Apri and May, Expenditure generally has been "qc kept within the estimates, and economies, to meet the reduced -price of ihe commodity and the further re-triered quotas, have been made wherever possible, but not the to detriment of the well-being of the of estate.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.