Report on the Maritime Trade of the Province of Sind for the Official Year 1925-26

Asis natural in a port which depends for the prosperity of its trade on the extent of the supplies of food-stuffs and raw materials and produce shipped to foreign countries the set-back was due in the first place to the curtailment of exports of wheat barley and rapeseed owing to a reduction in the world prices of the first two commodities accompanied by a fall in the quantities available for e [...] The fall in the total value of this trade was due partly to a reduction in the general price level of several commodities to which reference is made in paragraph 4 below but the main cause of the decline was an appreciable contraction in the values of cotton manufactures and sugar which as will be seen from Table C of the Appendix are the two leading commodities in the import trade. [...] Among the principal features besides the L (w) 166-I2 fall in prices referred to above which affected commercial transations during the year the continued stability of exchange and the stringency of the motley-market during the greater part of the year are deserving of note. [...] The effect of the change in the level of prices since the outbreak of the great war is illustrated in the following table in which the volume of the trade in 1925-26 in some of the more important articles of import and export trade is compared with the pre-war volume and its value recalculated at pre-war rates :- Table No. [...] The expansion under the former occurred in purchases of carriages and wagons and parts thereof by the North-Western Railway from the United Kingdom and Belgium and under the latter in arrivals of metal-work from the United Kingdom and Belgium required for the construction of the Lloyd Barrage.