WAR DEBTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 5, 5 December 1931, Page 7

WAR DEBTS

BRITAIN'S BENEVOLENCY

FOREIGN COUNTRIES OBLIGA-

TIONS

BURDEN ON BRITISH TAXPAYERS

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Dec. 4.

In the course of an answer to a question in the House of Commons on the funding of the Italian and French war debts to Great Britain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Neville Chamberlain, stated that the net amounts of Italian and French war debts at the date of funding was £560,000,000 and £600,000,000 respectively. The sums advanced to France and Italy were, of course, borrowed by the British Government and constituted part of Britain’s war'debts.

The average cost of borrowing during the war was over 5 per cent., and on this basis the funding agreements represented a remission of 63 per cent, of the French war debt and 86 per cent, of the Italian war debt, aud the British taxpayer had been left to bear an equivalent proportion of the charge involved by these borrowings.