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THE NORTHWARD EXPANSION 465
Railways,
an agreement was reached whereby the company undertook to purchase
trucks to the value of -£5,000,000 and to hire them to the railways for
twenty-five years. In addition, the new company has taken over
responsibility for the .£ 1,000,000 loan that had already been made to
the railways by Rhodesian Anglo American Limited. Most of the new
trucks are to be in service by the end of this year.
Towards
the end of 1955, with the Kariba power project beginning to take
practical shape, the question of how this and other urgent schemes were
to be financed had to be determined. There could be no doubt that,
apart from any special interest we, as a group, might wish to take in
the economic development of the new country, our copper-mining
companies must be vitally concerned, from a strictly business
viewpoint, in any projects that supplied much-needed power and improved
transport facilities. Indeed, failing the establishment of some large
power project such as Kariba, the Northern Rhodesian copper companies
would have had to incur large expenditure not only in providing
additional thermal power stations but in supplementing existing
transport facilities for the large extra tonnages of coal that would,
in such circumstances, have been required. Accordingly we decided that
our group's business interests, combined with the general policy we
have adopted of using some of the group's resources in promoting the
development of the Federation, justified our offering to lend the
Federal Government large funds for both power and transport projects;
and, in the result, Rhokana Corporation and Nchanga Consolidated Copper
Mines, together with two companies of the Rhodesian Selection Trust
group, whose interests.in Northern Rhodesia run so closely parallel
with our own, have agreed to make loans totalling ^20,000,000. In
addition, all the Copper-belt producing mines will, in due course,
accept a surcharge on power from Kariba until a total of £10,000,000
has accrued from this surcharge to the Kariba authority.
These
have been straightforward matters in which there has been a happy
combination of self-interest and public spirit. No doubt we shall find
other opportunities in the new country for action on lines that will
simultaneously serve our own interests and the cause of national
development. We beheve that action on such lines will be realistic,
will be appreciated by the public and the Government of the Federation
and will be acceptable to, and endorsed by, the shareholders of this
corporation and of our associated companies.
These
were the years in which the Government in the United Kingdom was
making vigorous efforts to build up the economies of the
'under-developed countries' of the Commonwealth, first, through the
Colonial Development Corporation, and secondly, through the formation
of the body known as the Commonwealth Development Finance Company
Limited. It was in co-operation with the Northern
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