BANK OVERDRAFT RATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 28, 3 February 1930, Page 5

BANK OVERDRAFT RATE.

UNFORTUNATE FOR FARMERS

MR. W. J. POLSON'S PROPOSAL

RURAL CREDITS BOARD BOXDS.

(By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.")

NEW PLYMOUTH, this day.

"It is an unfortunate time for the banks to raise the overdraft rate, when farmers are requiring all the finance they can get in order to hold their wool," said Mr. W. J. Poison, M.P., Dominion president of the Xew Zealand Farmers' Union, in reply to questions.

The curtailment of imports was important, Mr. Poison continued, but a careful discrimination on the part of the banks might have effected that curtailment without penalising the farming community. Under the circumstances, the Government might assist greatly by supporting the bonds of the Rural Intermediate Credits Board to enable it to lend against wool as it did against wheat. That was not a question of wool control, which was highly controversial, but merely a matter of ordinary finance.

"Any essential commodity which is fifty per cent below the cost of production must recover in price to some extent at all events," said Mr. Poison. Advances at the present brokers' values at 6$ per cent up to £2000, the Rural Intermediate Credits Board's limit could safely be made against wool in approved stores in order to give the market a chance to rally and would be of material benefit to the farming community. The question was of sufficient national importance, Mr. Poison thought, to warrant the Government taking action. ■ • The Hon. G. W. Forbes, Minister of Lands and Agriculture, in reply to a telegram from Mr. Poison, had expressed the opinion that such a proposal should come from farming organisations with some degree of unanimity before the Government considered it.

"The proposal is one to which producers might give consideration," concluded Mr. Poison. "The necessary machinery is already in existence."