Buy United Fruit?

All Costa Ricans knew that their new President Jose Figueres intended to ask for a drastic revision in the government's contract with the United Fruit Co., the country's biggest business. Last week the President uncovered an ambitious, long-range plan that would eventually put banana production in Costa Rican hands, but leave distribution to United Fruit.

President Figueres chose to outline his plan in a 2,000-word letter to U.S. Ambassador Robert C. Hill. Terms of the existing contract, he said, are fair and just only in the spirit of 50 years ago, when banana cultivation was a little-known and risky venture. Now Costa Ricans are capable of producing commercial crops, and he proposed to buy out the company plantations--housing, schools, hospitals, machinery, servicing equipment and all. His government would resell the plantation properties to Costa Ricans, but would keep and run the schools and hospitals.

Details of the transaction, including the price of the properties and terms of payment, would be worked out in a friendly spirit with United Fruit, he emphasized, especially since the sale would have to be amortized over a long period of credit from the company. Figueres reported that he had already outlined his plan to United Fruit's board chairman, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, when Coolidge visited San Jose last month. "I explicitly told Coolidge," the President said, "that it is not the intention of my government to nationalize the industry by expropriation or any violent measure . . . The sale plan is a simple suggestion to sow the idea in the minds of the directors . . ."

Then, as if to indicate that he might well settle for less, Figueres listed another set of proposals he had made to United Fruit's chairman. Here he got much more specific: pending future sale of its Costa Rican assets, the company should now 1) accept a boost in its corporation tax from 15% to 50%, 2) forgo its tariff exemptions and pay the regular 25% duty on its stores and equipment imports.

In Boston last week, company officials maintained official silence. Though armed with a working contract running till 1988, they had agreed to revisions when Figueres held office the first time in 1948. When measured against the slam-bang attitude of Guatemala's Red-led land reformers, the Figueres approach practically reeked of sweet reasonableness. But the fact remained that any new deal in Costa Rica would surely set the pattern for future negotiations over Unifruit's important holdings in Honduras and Panama.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.