DESCREU Authority Stateletter Inhz 8: ML, HAR Cate 2498 Kekich Plan, and lamented that Kekich was not free to return to Costa Rica and direct the establishment of reforms personally. In this connection he declared that he was in favor of employing foreign technicians generally in an effort to solve Costa Rica many problems. He said, however, that these various reforms were part of the program of the Bloque de la Victoria and intimated that they would eventually be accomplished. He did not seem too sanguine about their execution in the near future, but rather appeared to be vaguely optimistic that affairs would straighten themselves out some how.
He also declared that the Government had found the funds necessary to meet its current obligations.
Mora also brought out that he was at present working on a project of law to revise Costa Rica obviously inadequate income tax system. Under the present set up, he explained, the income tax yielded only about a million colones a year, while expenses were over seventy millions annually. The income tax, which he characterized as the best method of collecting revenue, was producing such a small amount because the officers charged with its collection were corrupt, and for a bribe of some thirty colones they would allow a taxpayer to cut off several hundred thousand colones from his taxable income.
Sr. Mora also spoke for some time on the country agricultural production; his thesis was that at present there were simply not enough laborers to make the nation self sufficient in foodstufis, since the majority of agricultura employed in the cultivation of coffee, bananas, and emergency programs such as cinchona, while many others were engaged in such projects as the Pan American Highway, etc. He defended Costa Rica dedication to coffee production by stating that it enabled the nation to gain sufficient foreign exehange to import needed merchandise, but said that it was a bad practice to have to import foodstures, and advocated the intensification of agriculture through mechanization where possible, and through a more scientific approach to the raising of foods. He compared Costa Rica average yield of rice of some fifteen quintals per hectare to that of more advanced countries, where he said that it was approximately sixty. At this point he digressed for a few moments to give his opinion of the Minister of Agriculture, Sr. José Joaquin Peralta; he said that he thought that was half crazy. and added that he believed that Peralta was considering his Presidential aspirations before anything else.
In Mora words, once a person becomes a candidate he is no longer a minister. By inference he criticized Peralta recent visit to South America as being a waste of time, and said that the Government planners were all alike. they sat in their ofans and argued, but that they never attempted to put even the most rudimentary schemes into action.
Mora said, with evident satisfaction, that in contrast to this usual inaction he and his party were now engaged in a practical experiment designed to prove that foodstuffs could be grown successfully and profitably. He said that the United Fruit Company had agreed to give him some good land and fifty thousand colones with which to carry on his experiment, but that because he knew that he would be charged with selling out to the Fruit Company if he publicly accepted this offer, he had arranged for the Fruit Company to make the gift to the Government. which