THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 201, 8 August 1928, Page 4

THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT

gO far as the Minister’s statement is concerned the extracts we are able to give speak very much for themselves. The actual operations of the financial year that closed on 31st. March last show an eventual outcome that approximates very closely to the forecast of the Budget. The revenue has been a little bigger and the expenditure a little less than the estimates then made, but in each case not as much as the half of one per cent. Considering the emergency' difficulties of the year, arising in great measure from widespread unemployment, this is a gratifying result. The “surplus” is quite a modest one, only some £lBO,OOO, thus indicating that no unnecessary volume of taxation was imposed. Time was when a handsome surplus was regarded as a feather in the cap of the Finance Minister. But those days of continuous lush prosperity are not now, and the closer the Minister can cut his coat according to his cloth the more credit he deserves. The near balancing of accounts is all the more welcome when we consider that it has been attained despite fresh remissions that were made in the way of duties upon several imports of industrial and household use. It has been atatined, too, in spite of a heavy fall, some £300,006 in the general return from the Customs, due to a wholesome even if compulsory decrease, evidently foreseen, in the previously altogether excessive volume of our imports. Notwithstanding all that was said with regard to what were really equitable readjustments of the graduated scale of income-tax having been made with a view to increasing the return from that source, the actual collections show a decrease of nearly £150,000, while those for land-tax have gone down by just about half that amount. So that,

on the score of taxation, the community has been “bled” —another favourite word with the Opposition—to a quite appreciably less extent than in the previous year, a notable increase, however, being that in the death duties drawn from wealthy estates. On the expenditure side we have an apparent increase over the previous year of close on £600,000. From this, however, for purposes of comparison, has to be deducted some £360,000 representing the distribution of the new motor taxation devoted exclusively to road improvements. For the rest of the excess of expenditure over the previous year we have to look mainly to an inevitable increase in our interest bill, due to fresh borrowings, all bestowed upon works and investments that may be expected to 'provide returns that will meet the outgoings. Then, we have increases of £90,000 in pensions under various heads, of £73,000 in subsidies to Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards, and of £56,000 losses on the working of isolated railway lines, most of them the political bribes or follies of bygone administrations. On the other hand, we have a reduction of £90,000 in administrative expenses, showing that a more vigilant eye is being kept on this broad outflowing channel. The Minister is able to point to a policy and system adopted that have enabled him to meet the extra payments for interest and sinking fund on loan moneys without recourse to extra taxation —a system, by the way, which he tells us has been adopted by the Bri tish Chancellor of the Exchequer. Out of the accumulated surpluses of last and earlier years the Minister has applied £96,000 towards the reduction of the Public Debt, £117.000 towards paying for a highly profitable investment in Bank of New Zealand shares, £250,000 to the Public Works Fund, £45,000 by way of advance to the State Forests account, and £75,000 in subsidies to local bodies for the relief of unemployment, objects to which little exception can be taken. From the same source he proposes taking the £400,000 which the Government is providing towards financing the Rural Intermediate Credits scheme. Taken altogether, it will be seen that the Minister has rendered a satisfactory account of his stewardship such a: augurs well for an ultimate organisation of our public finance on some very much better basis than that on which it has hitherto rested.