INDUCEMENT TO SAVE

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24741, 5 December 1945, Page 9

INDUCEMENT TO SAVE

- ♦ RETURNS HELD TO BE TOO LOW

“ SACRIFICE NOT WORTH WHILE ” (P.A.) AUCKLAND, Dec. 4. “The return to the investor in interest or dividend is too low to-day to encourage thrift,” said the chairman of the Auckland Stock Exchange (Mr G.*Tl. Buttle) at the .annual meeting of the exchange to-day. Young people were often heard to say that the reward for saving was so small as to make the sacrifice not worth while, he added. “High security prices, of courseware the .natural outcome of a dangerous accumulation of funds through the socalled expansion of / credit and the enormous expenditure of the war, added to severe limitations upon new avenues of investment,” continued Mr Buttle. “These limitations are due to a large extent to the Import licensing system. The present large accumulation of funds must be absorbed if prices for ordinary goods are to be kept anywhere near reasonable bounds.

“The raising of the limit on which deposits in Savings Batik accounts may earh interest from £2OO to £4OO is a practical • effort to ease the pressure On these funds, but is quite inadequate. The natural outlet for them.” said Mr Buttle, “is their absorption In further development of existing industries and the establishment of new ones.

“A reduction in income tax and a removal of restrictions would assist the flow of these funds into channels profitable to both the investor and the general public,” Mr Buttle said that people looked in vain, in industries nationalised or controlled by the State, for a cessation of labour troubles and reductions m costs or increases in supplies. The whole subsidy system demanded expert analysis and examination, so that the public might know what they -really were called upon to pay for good which apparently were sold at a relatively low rate.