DEVELOPMENT LOAN

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27377, 16 June 1954, Page 12

DEVELOPMENT LOAN

FALL IN RATE OF SUBSCRIPTIONS

MR HOLLAND APPEALS FOR GREATER SUPPORT (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 15.

Subscriptions to the £30,000,000 national development loan totalled £7,004,000 from 2178 applications, the Prime Minister (Mr Holland) an-

nounced today. “These figures represent the return for the first two weeks, and although I am pleased at the fine support given by the smaller investors, who are so important to the success of the loan, it is disappointing to see the daily returns drop,” he said. » Mr Holland said that In the period of a little- more than three weeks remaining before the loan closed on July 8 subscriptions each working day would have to increase to £1,400,000.

Loan stock carried a State guarantee, he said. As an investment that could quickly be converted into cash, the loan was particularly attractive to surplus superannuation funds and company funds placed in reserves. “At the present time company reserves are in a very healthy position, and I suggest that company directors might well give serious consideration to transferring all they can into the loan,” Mr Holland said.

School boards, school committees, and parent-teacher associations were asking for more and more classrooms, and they in turn might fairly be asked to give the Government a hartn to find the money it took to build those rooms, said the Minister of Education (Mr R. M. Algie) tonight in a broadcast interview on the loan.

Mr Algie said that there was a treniendous programme of public works such as roads, bridges, houses, schools, and obviously the Government could not handle that programme without good, hard cash. He knew of only two ways of getting that money—by taxation or by borrowing it for a few years from the people. Lending to the Government was very good business, for the Government paid interest on the money it borrowed, used the money to build the services and amenities the country needed, and later paid the money back. If there were a war many people would be on committees actively trying to raise money for patriotic purposes, he said. Was there not just as big a need for patriotism in peacetime? t If all the school boards and committees took an active interest in the loan it would soon be heavily oversubscribed.