The Press MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 1943. Housing Accounts

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24027, 16 August 1943, Page 4

The Press MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 1943. Housing Accounts

The finances of the State housing enterprise, as reviewed in the annual report of the State Advances Corporation, again present the disturbing aspects which have previously been commented on here. The 194142 surplus of £19,100 in the revenue and expenditure account (new housing scheme) fell last year to £6250. One contributory cause was rising maintenance, the earliest houses erected since 1937 now having to be painted. The maintenance figures have risen as follows: 1939-40 1940-41 1941-42 1942-43 £ 55,175 122,122 175,932 208,559 But in the later years the amounts shown include allocations to a combined reserve—covering rates, maintenance, bad debts, and vacant tenancies—which at March 31, 1943, stood at £673,750, an increase of £214,500 during the year. It is, however, unsatisfactory to be unable to learn from the accounts what has been currently spent and what reserved under each heading: and this is particularly true of the item for losses and vacant tenancies. In 1939-40, the loss was £3190. In fhe three following years the figures are £31,667, £41,413, and £48,740 respectively; but these are lumped figures, including actual losses and reserves against losses. The failure to separate them is a failure to disclose actual trends in tenancy conditions. In the absence of more precise information, however, the taxpayer who is ultimately responsible for this business is entitled to surmise that the rising group totals indicate a trend the wrong way. This is confirmed by a similar rise in the totals shown in the balance-sheet for rents receivable: £21,311 (1940-41), £25,925 (1941-42), and £51,538 (1942-43). The “ overdue ” figure under that heading in those three years is £14,351, £17,786, and £42,393 respectively. The comparative significance of the above figures as a whole may be more correctly estimated If it is borne in mind that the scope of the housing enterprise, measured by the total loan liability of the Housing Account, grew between 1941-42 and 1942-43 from £20,618,945 to £21,743,300 ( Finally, although the depreciation rate has been advanced considerably, £174,812 being the 1942-43 figure against £123,404 in 1941-42, a rate of less than 1 per cent, cannot be considered nearly adequate. The value of the houses in the new scheme is booked at £19,663,972, less depreciation reserve (the total of five years’ allocations) of £459,128, or £19,204,844. The disproportion evident in this rate of provision for capital wastage carries a grave warning. A better rate, of course, would throw the revenue and expenditure account into a condition that would make the warning as obvious as it is grave. But Parliament should be able to read danger in the figures as they are, Jugoslavia While the exiled Government of Jugoslavia appears to be finding its way by successive steps of reconstruction to a basis at once more popular and more effective, the trouble which the Jugoslav guerrilla forces have given the Axis since the conquest of the Balkans is apparently increasing. This is in. part due to the progress towards political unity, which has facilitated the co-operation of the Mikhailovic forces and the leftist partisans. Other factors which promote better organised and more vigorous resistance are the linking of the Jugoslav • guerrillas, in the same way as the Greek, with the Middle East High Command and the probable use of Sicilian aerodromes to co-operate with them. Besides, the invasion of Sicily, the threat to the mainland, and the weakening of Italian military control will undoubtedly have had an immensely encouraging effect among the guerrilla troops and the civilians whose help they need. The German substantive defence line in the Balkans runs from Thrace, through Salonika and the Monastir Gap, to the Albanian coast. Stronger Jugoslav resistance, therefore, presents a threat behind the line; and that the Germans fear it has been shown by new efforts to beat it down. They have been no more successful than in the past. On the contrary, the Jugoslavs have been reported to have answered this sixth drive by extending the areas under their control in Bosnia and Croatia. The Axis policy of administration and exploitation has dismembered the country. Germany has exercised direct military control of Serbia; Italy has administered Montenegro; Bulgaria has taken over the greater part of Macedonia, and Hungary- the fertile area of Batchka. The Germans and Italians have largely had to confine their public works activities to the repair or reconstruction of railways attacked by the patriots. Germany’s chief interest in Serbia is the production, with Serbian forced labour, of copper, lead, and zinc, of which there are rich deposits. Serbia, in fact, is stated to have become Germany’s “ greatest single source ” of copper. Croatia, which has nominally been created an independent kingdom, contains large deposits of bauxite; but production from them is believed to have fallen. Croatia’s resources of manganese, chromium, antimony, and magnesite, also appear to have been worked under agreement between Germany and Italy. Shortages of labour and machinery have hindered agricultural progress and, similarly, reduced the output of the textile, canning, and chemical industries. The whole industrial output, it is estimated by a correspondent in the “ Economist," has fallen 50 per cent, since 1940. But Germany has heavily drained Jugoslavia for labour. Ser-

bian prisoners of war numbering 100,000 out of 350,000 were transferred to Germany and there are probably 170,000 Croatian workers also in the Reich. A German attempt to organise the peasants of Jugoslavia, about 80 per cent, of the normal population, into cooperatives has met with little success: cereal and root-crop harvests, reports agree, have fallen 50 per cent, in the last two years. Even Germany has been forced to supply potatoes from her own depleted stocks. The German High Command may be able to reckon the military and economic credits of the Balkans campaign very high; but they have, been heavily offset in Jugoslavia, and the tally is not yet complete. Events in the Mediterranean have opened a new account.