64% Of Council Loan Taken

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31232, 2 December 1966, Page 1

64% Of Council Loan Taken

Although local bodies in many parts of New Zealand have experienced difficulty in filling their loans, £308,700 of the Christchurch City Council’s £440,000 electrical extension loan, which opened for sale yesterday, had been taken by 4 p.m.

Because an additional £40,000 is wanted by the council for street works, the loan is actually for £480,000, and by 4 p.m. 64 per cent of this had been subscribed.

This response was “consistent with the loyal support the Christchurch people have given to City Council loans,” the chairman of the council’s finance committee (Cr. H. P. Smith) said yesterday. It was encouraging to the council, which hoped that the loan would be filled quickly as an investment in the progress of the city, he said. Only £60,000 of the £356,000 of an Auckland City Council loan was subscribed in October, and other local bodies in the country were finding themselves unable to get money. Christchurch could fairly claim to be in an extremely favourable position in this way, Cr. Smith said. Cr. Smith rejected remarks by the chairman of the finance committee of the Dunedin City Council (Mr H. S.

J. Tilly), who criticised the Government for not permitting the raising of interest on local body loans. Cr. Smith said that additional interest meant additional cost in servicing the loan, and that local body increases in interest rates would probably be followed closely by an increase in first mortgage rates.