BB* least once a year and carrying on its business between meetings by correspondence and a secretariat, the Commonwealth Telecommunications Bureau (q.v.), in London. The Commonwealth Telecommunications Board was accordingly dissolved on 31st March 1969 by an Order-in-Council made under the Commonwealth Telecommunications Act 1968. The Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreements were at the same time terminated and a new financial agreement between the Partner Governments in respect of the wayleave scheme, the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation Financial Agreement 1969, became operative. The present partnership, which is concerned only with the telecommunications assets (principally submarine telegraph cables and radio links, with some submarine telephone cables) of the First Wayleave Scheme, consists of the Governments of Australia, Barbados, Botswana, Canada, Ceylon, Cyprus, The Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Zambia and the United Kingdom. APPENDIX D COMMONWEALTH TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU 28 Pall Mall, London S.W.1 (01-930 4248) General Secretary: S. N. Kalra Chief of Systems: B. V. Dentskevich Chief of Administration: C. A. G. Coleridge, OBE The Commonwealth Telecommunications Bureau is the Secretariat of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation*. The Bureau was incorporated in Britain on 8th May 1968 by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Act 1968 and from 1st April 1969 it took over from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board the administration of the Commonwealth co-operative telecommunications financial arrangements. The functions of the Bureau are to collect, maintain and disseminate such traffic, rate, routeing and financial data and other information as the Council may determine; to process material for Conferences and meetings of the Council; to perform the accounting and clearing house functions of the Organisation; to maintain and distribute regulations as determined by the Council; and to perform such other duties as the General Secretary may direct. * See p. 792 795 APPENDIX E COMMONWEALTH SUGAR AGREEMENT I N 1951 the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement was concluded between the British Government and sugar industries and exporters in Australia, South Africa, the West Indies and British Guiana, Mauritius and Fiji. British Honduras acceded to the agreement in 1954 and East Africa acceded in 1960. As a result of the withdrawal of South Africa from the Commonwealth the South African industry ceased to be a part of the agreement on 31st December 1961. To ensure an outlet for Swaziland sugar and comparable returns for her producers after that date, a separate bilateral sugar agreement was negotiated between the United Kingdom and South Africa which terminated on 31st December 1964. On 1st January 1965 Swaziland, India and Rhodesia acceded to the agreement when additional allocation of quotas was possible following the end of the agreement with South Africa. The agreement provides that each exporting territory shall receive the price settled by negotiation as being reasonably remunerative to efficient producers for a specified quantity of sugar sold to Britain (negotiated price quota). The agreement was originally for eight years but, with the exception of 1967, has been consistently extended annually by one year so as to preserve the eight-year term. In 1968, it was amended and made of indefinite duration, with provision for a review every three years, beginning in 1971. The negotiated price quotas consolidated in 1965 are: (The Rhodesian quota of 25,000 long tons has been placed in suspense until the return of constitutional rule). The negotiated price for 1972, 1973, and 1974 consists of the following elements: Basic price: £50 per long ton, 96° Polarisation f.o.b. and stowed bulk; For less developed countries (i.e. all but Australia) a special payment consisting of £11 per long ton, related inversely to the world sugar price in accordance with the following scale:-- The Special payment shall not be reduced in respect of any exporting Party to the Agreement:— (a) whose average annual export tonnage of sugar under International Sugar Agreement quotas in the three-year period 1968-70 was less than 20 per cent of its Negotiated Price Quota; or (b) whose total sugar production, as published by the International Sugar Organization, in the calendar year preceding the price year in question was less than 85 per cent of the average annual production in any three consecutive calendar years during the period 1966–70 inclusive. The Sugar Board constituted under the Sugar Act, 1956, meets the U.K. commitment for the purchase of negotiated price quota sugar by purchasing at the negotiated price and selling at the world price in the country of origin. In addition to the United Kingdom commitment to buy specified quantities at reasonable prices the agreement provides for the orderly marketing in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada of supplies in excess of the negotiated price quotas from the exporting countries and in normal times limits the total amounts which can be sold in these markets (including the negotiated price quotas). These totals are the overall agreement quotas. |