British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 758

CHAPTER XVII.

44. The more important of these economic enterprises include : (i) Transport Cooperatives, both for inter-urban and urban transport, including Egged, Hamaavir (the Tel Aviv bus service) and Hamkasher (the Jerusalem bus service).

(ii) ' Agricultural cooperatives; these included, on the 1st January, 1945, some one hundred and fifty collective communal settlements and 53 smallholders' settlements. (See below).

(iii) Marketing enterprises-

(a) The largest agricultural producers' marketing cooperative in Palestine is Tnuva. It engages in the marketing of milk, dairy products, eggs, fruit, flowers, vegetables, honey, poultry etc. of practically all communal and small-holders' and some other agricultural settlements. Total turnover during October, 1944-September, 1945: £P.4,942,000, including £P.l,843,000 for milk and £P.1,490,000 for other dairy products. During this period, 26.4 million litres of milk were supplied to the dairies of this cooperative, and 22! million eggs and 750 tons of poultry marketed through its services. Other sales included 8,460 tons of vegetables and fruit (excluding citrus), 1,630 tons of fish. (Compare these figures with those for the calendar year 1944 given in section 7 of chapter IXL The cooperative runs factories" for the production of fruit juices and preserves. It has developed special services with a social complexion such as the supply of cheap milk to pregnant women, to factory workers, school-children, etc. Figures of beneficiaries for the period October, 1944-September, l945, include 7,500 pregnant women, 26,000 children, 5,000 factory workers, etc.

(b) Hamashbir Hamerkazi supplies settlements and town workers with goods and commodities. Turnover in l944 : £P.3,000,000. Consumers supplied : 180,000. This cooperative runs its own flour-mi11s and factories• for shoes, textiles, rubber-products, seed-cleaning, etc., and has recently acquired a 50 per cent. holding in the Shemen soap plant. Its 175 cooperative shops had in 1944 a total turnover of £P.2,472,000 and 23,000 members (80,000 including families).

(iv) Other important economic enterprises-

(a) Yokhin. A company for the development of citrus groves, which contracts for absentee owners and has a factory of its own for the production of preserves. Turnover in 1944 : £P.355,000.

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