DOMINIONS HANDICAPPED

Hawera Star, Volume L, 30 October 1930, Page 9

DOMINIONS HANDICAPPED

ADVERSE R ATE OF EXCHANGE. INTEREST ON LOANS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, Oct. 30. “The adverse rate of exchange is driving New Zealanders back to their own country,” said Mr M. C. Barnett, formerly assistant-Public Trustee, who returned from abroad. “If you send £IOO from the Dominion to England you get £95 for it at Home, but £IOO remitted to New Zealand is worth £lO5 here. “If you are in London you cannot arrange with a banker in New Zealand to pay the shipping offices in the 'Dominion for your passage out from England. Then, again, if yo-u stay over six months in England you are liable to income tax for a- full year.” Mr Barnett expressed the opinion that some way must- be found to relieve Australia and New Zealand from the heavy burden of interest on loans which had been raised far too readily at high rates. A huge consolidating loan at a low rate seemed to him the only solution. He could not understand why the great- banking houses and investment corporations had imposed such great burdens on the oversea Dominions for interest and exchange.