CALL FOR ECONOMY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 303, 7 December 1931, Page 8

CALL FOR ECONOMY

BUSINESS MEN’S ACTION NON-POLITICAL COMMISSION. CAMPAIGN BY CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE. Wellington, Dec 6. Concerted action by all the 45 cham bers affiliated to the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand is being taken in a short and determined campaign for greater national economy, and a deputation is to wait on the Government shortly to urge the appointment of a non-political commission, said Mr C. M. Bowden, president of the association, on Saturday. The association is prepared to use a flying squadron of members to visit outlying chambers to ensure that the move has the fullest co-operation, and chambers are being urged to immediately appoint committees to consider the matter and report to the executive. Mr Bowden said that conditions had reached such a stage that decided steps would have to be taken to secure greater national economy. The commis sion proposed should have instructious to prepare urgently for c loption by the Government an adequate plan for the adjustment of national and local requirements to the ability of the country to provide means. The efforts of the Government to effect economies had produced very little result. The reduction in national expenditure under the supplementary Budget had been only £200,000, or less than one per cent. National and local taxation had risen from a total of £5 14s lOd per head in 1904 to £l7 12s 2d per head in 1930. The national debt had increased by £88,000,000 from 1919 to 1929, and local body debt by £40,000,000 in the same period. More than £26,000.000 of direct and indirect taxation would be extracted from the community next year, although the national productive income had dropped by about £31,000,000 since 1929-30. “If the costs that the business community has saved are only to be taken away again by increased taxation to sustain the irreducible administration system that straddles this country like a Colossus, then trade and industry must breathe their last,” said Mr Bowden. “These accumulated administrative costs are now clinging to our backs with the tenacity with which the old man of the sea clung to the back of Sinbad. The wells of taxable income are running dry, and the weight of the present taxation cannot be cased until the administrative costs of the Government are reduced.”