FOG OVER BORROWING

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 152, 30 June 1938, Page 8

FOG OVER BORROWING

i Has the public a right—as claimedj by the Leader of the Opposition —to j know the terms on which the Government is borrowing, how much it is j borrowing from the Post Office Savings Bank and Government Departments, and what interest the is paying; also, what sums (if any) it has borrowed in-terest-free, and from what institution? Anyone would think that the public has an absolute right to this information as to what is happening between borrower and lender. The public is the borrower, and a large section of the public (Savings Bank depositors and others) is lender as well as borrower; and apparently the people of New Zealand are the only borrowers and lenders in New Zealand who seem to have no right whatever to know what they are doing with their own money. Surely no democratic Government —least of all a Minister like Mr. Nash—can subscribe to the theory that the depositors of the money lent, and the borrowers of this and other money, have no right to absolute information on the Government's interest borrowing and interest-free borrowing. Yet Mr. Nash did not reply last night to the questions of the Leader of the Opposition. He made no suggestion that interest-free borrowing is necessary because of any dearth of loanable capital in New Zealand. He did not advance any reasons why the Government should be forced to such borrowing; at the same time he did not > offer the denial that Mr. Hamilton's remarks invited. Those people who are only borrowers, and those who are the unconscious lenders, may form their own opinions of this Ministerial reticence.

On another point—the insufficiency | of the balance between exports and imports* to meet oversea interest and services—Mr. Nash was _ candid enough to- admit "insufficiency at present." He is leaning on a past sufficiency ("there had been such a piling up of London funds," etc.), but he gave no indication of any certainty of a return to sufficiency. The important point is that there is an insufficiency of exports not yesterday, but today, with tomorrow in doubt. The fact that-Mr. Wright is bringing before the House evidence of staff-reduction in clothing factories, while Mr. Nash himself admits that "the country is importing too much," throws an interesting sidelight on the claim of the Minister of Industries and Commerce that higher public'purchasing power, resulting from higher wages and more employment, would offset the increased posts of New Zealand industries, because this higher purchasing power (an undefinable quantity) would enable the New Zealand industries to secure a larger turnover. When the Minister of Industries and Commerce made that statement, the "Evening Post" asked how the New Zealand industries would benefit if the buying public utilised its increased purchasing power in part to buy in the cheapest market —that is, to buy imported goods instead of the cost-raised (and, in cases, priceraised) product of New Zealand industries. Mr. Nash's and Mr. Wright's statements give this question added point. No Minister has yet answered it.