Expensive Lesson

Useless piles of cement still stood high on Rangoon's docks, tying up harbor traffic and running up demurrage charges. In all, 124,000 tons of it had been unloaded on an inexperienced Burmese trade delegation by Communist negotiators in return for surplus rice (TIME, May 21). Ordinarily, the Burmese would have been delighted by India's offer last week to buy 50,000 tons of it.

But India offered only $24.67 a ton for the cement, which Burma had bartered from Russia, Czechoslovakia and East Germany at the exchange rate of $29.12 a ton. India was not trying to pull a fast one: New Delhi said its bid was based on cement prices quoted to it directly by the Soviet Union. In its headlong rush to woo, Russia had been willing to sell more cheaply to India than to Burma, a country which in the Communist scale of things is not as important.

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