DEVELOPMENT LOAN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27073, 23 June 1953, Page 11

DEVELOPMENT LOAN

£4,800,000 NEEDED IN EIGHT DAYS

MR MARSHALL APPEALS FOR SUBSCRIBERS (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 22. Subscriptions have to be increased from £400,000 to twice that amount each working day if the Government’s national development loan of £20,000,000 is to be filled by the closing date, next Tuesday. Making this point in a radio broadcast tonight, the Minister in charge of the State Advances Corporation (Mr J. R. Marshall) reported that by today 3600 subscribers had contributed £15,200,000. Reviewing the country’s housing needs and the part played by the State Advances Corporation in providing capital, Mr Marshall said: “The money which the corporation lends is money which the Government must first borrow. That is why the loan is important for housing.” He added that last year the corporation advanced more than £20,000,000 to help more than 11,000 New Zealanders to buy or build their own houses or become established on the land. This year the corporation could expect about £6,000,000 from loan repayments. “You can see how our lending operations would suffer if we had to j-ely on this alone,” the Minister said. The corporation was expected to have to pay for about 2500 new State houses this year and for some of the 1000 imported precut houses now on the way. Their cost had to be met, whether the houses were rented or sold.

Mr Marshall referred to the Government’s national housing campaign, with its theme of “costs down and houses up.” Declaring that the loan represented a sound business proposition for investors, Mr Marshall said: “If you have £lOO or £lOOO or an even larger sum you can do no better than invest it in this country’s future. Within the next eight days you have the opportunity to do that in the national development loan.”