Page:Syria and Palestine WDL11774.pdf/146

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ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
[No 60.

not values. Moreover, imported goods are often transshipped at the larger for the smaller ports (especially at Beirut), and not only are these goods reckoned in the returns for both ports but they are treated at the minor port as of Turkish origin. It is also to be remembered that the Consular statistics refer to sea trade only, and that in them, as well as in the official returns, a certain amount of the traffic to and from Alexandretta is not really Syrian.

(a) Exports

Statistics.—Of the tables given below in the Appendix, Table II summarises the official statistics for 1910-11, a fairly typical year, in which there was an average harvest and an absence of foreign trouble. Table III shows the values of the exports, classified according to destination, from the three principal ports, Alexandretta, Beirut, and Jaffa, during the years 1910-12. Similar figures for the minor ports are not available, but those given may be taken as fairly representative. Table IV contains classified totals with percentages, for the same three ports in the typical year 1910.

The sum of the values in Table II is 398,374,279 piastres, or approximately £3,622,000. Exports from Alexandretta, Beirut, and Jaffa to other parts of the Turkish Empire, which, as already explained, are not included in Table II, amounted in 1910 to £626,249, and for the whole of Syria may be put roughly at £700,000. But against this must be set the values of those exports included in Table II which are really of non-Syrian origin, so that the total value for 1910 may be reckoned at approximately 3 millions sterling. Syrian exports consist in the main of the vegetable and animal products of the country, and tend to fluctuate with them. Of the expanding branches the most conspicuous is the export of oranges from Jaffa, which advanced steadily from 744,463 cases in 1909 to 1,608,570 cases in 1913. Exports of oranges and lemons