CAILLAUX’S TASK

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 14 May 1925, Page 7

CAILLAUX’S TASK

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS

REFORMS OUTLINED

INCREASE IN TAXATION

BY CABLE -PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. PARIS, May 13. The Minister for nuance (.At. Caillaux), addressing the nuance Commission in the Chamber, outlined reforms to cover tire Budget deficit of £38,600,000. tie announced that it was proimsed to increase taxation by 3,5u0,000,000 francs in order that tiie whole of the permanent expenses ■of the Budget would be covered. A national bank of reinsurance would be established, to which all insurance companies would he obliged to bring at least 50 per cent of their premiums. This would ensure to the State a proportion of the profits upon insurance, which was virtually a monopoly. New taxes wou.ld include an increase in the tobacco duties and a tax on refining petrol. The income tax does not appear capable of an increase, but it would be collected under more stringent conditions. The new taxes cannot have full effect in 1925, so the Treasury must meet the State’s demands this year. M. Caillaux emphasised that 130,000,000,000 francs of the French debt was in the form t>f short term engagements. There was grave danger that the receipts under the Dawes scheme, amounting to 1,240,000,000 francs, would not benefit the Treasury, being allocated to tne liberated regions. M. Caillaux also proposes to earmark a proportion of the receipts from the Dawes scheme for reducing France’s debts to Britain and America.

The French Minister* for Finance, M. Caillaux, in a statement to the Paris correspondent of The Times at the beginning of this month, said: “My intention is that henceforth the .periodical accounts of the French Treasury shall be as clear, full and unequivocal as those of the British Treasury. I am here as a financier, and not as a politician. It is not my business fo rake up old disputes or to quarrel with a situation I have not created. My duty is to give France and the world a clear and complete statement of our financial situation, which is most serious, but is not nearly as tragic as some people are trying to make out.” M. Caillaux declared that he was not a miracle-worker, hut he believed he could produce a general plan for the financial rehabilitation of France. He realises that he is not generally liked, but he does not ask for love. He accepts the conditional confidence his opponents have given him as being a challenge to transform his criticism into constructive proposals. He may fall by the way, hut will not lack courage.