BRITAIN’S NATIONAL DEBT.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XV, Issue 186, 6 November 1925, Page 4

BRITAIN’S NATIONAL DEBT.

While wo have been having a great deal made here recently of Now Zealand’s Public Debt, which—outside that incurred in connection with the w ar—is in the main represented by interest-earning investments in country with further great assets in the way of natural resources not yet half developed, some not even explored, but little thought is given to the vast and almost entirely dead-weight burden of the National Debt of the Motherland. Recent London files contain summaries of the latest official annual return issued in this connection, and the figures cited can hardly fail to raise in the mind of the reader a sombre sense of the immensity of the task which its gradual reduction will impose on this and future generations, a.ud of the extraordinary patience which that task will involve. Thus we find that while during the year ended Anril 1. 1925, the “dead-weight’’ debt declined by some 31 million to 7.616 million (made up of 6,525 million of

“internal” and 1,121 million of “external'’ debt), the total provision for interest, management, and repayment (which is, of course, the true measure of the “burden” of the National Debt) actually increased by nearly 10 million, to 357 million. That figure, indeed, represents by far the highest amount which the Old Country has ever spent on the National Debt, for even in the year 1920-21 (since when some 600 million of cash has been applied to debt redemption) the total annual cost of the debt provision was only 319 million. The increase is. of course, easily explained by the rise in the sinking fund provision (45 millions in 1924-25 against 21 millions in 1920-21), and bv the American debt settlement. But the fact remains that, nearly / ■' ‘ cears after the end of the war. tiife yearly cost of the debt is still tending upwards—it will probably reach its zenith in the current financial year, when a further five millions has to be provided for the sinking fund. The dead-weight figure of 7.646 million, which is about 175 million below the peak figure of 7,821 million for April 1, 1920, represents the total normal amount of the debt, excluding certain

“other capital liabilities’’ such as, for example Government annuities, valued on April 1. 1925. at 68 millions, but it includes 48 million of funding loan an<| victory bonds tendered for death duties and held by the National Debt Commissioners until drawn or paid oil. which ar© no longer, of course a genuine liability. AH these are rather staggering figures, and of course, acquire an added sinister moaning from the fact that the heavy taxation involved in meeting them stands badly in the way of successful competition with other manufacturing and exporting nations. Beside them our own load of dead-weight debt, to be carried by a country whose export industries arc really flourishing, sink into relative insignificance. The groat marvel really is that Britain has anything at all to lend even to her daughter domin ions. _