Prices and the Power Board

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 254, 26 October 1940, Page 3

Prices and the Power Board

(To the Editor.) Sir, —In Air. P. G. Guy’s last letter to you appearing on Tuesday, October 22, he asserts that “to keep in hand £13,000 after taking out all the amounts | required by the Government seems . . . hardly to comply with this stipulation,” that is, the stipulation that “when the board was formed the stipulation was made that all profits should be returned to the consumers in the form of reduced charges.” Now this £13,000 that tho board had as a credit balance in the nett revenue account at March 31, 1940, is almost fully absorbed by stocks on hand and advances to consumers; that is, if no stocks were kept for maintenance and repairs, and no advances made to help further consumers to enjoy the benefits of electricity on their farms and in their houses it could be returned to consumers in lessened charges. If this were done, how could the board pay for stocks on hand, for repairs and maintenance and making advances to consumers; why by borrowing more money, of course. What largo public service of this nature could be run on such a close margin without continually borrowing? The board had already borrowed a net amount of £521,744. Every business, even a public business, shouid be conducted with common sonse.

Of course the board desires to return every possible pound the consumers in lessened charges; are they not all consumers themselves? And they are carrying out the law in so doing. The board cannot make and retain a profit. Since it 3 commencement it has steadily reduced prices and, of course, will still go on reducing prices, whatever personnel is on the board. When our present member has gone, and all the members have gone, prices will be still further lessened, given a steadily increasing population and/or increasing demand. Of course, no sensible member will assert it was his personal efforts that brought this about.

And now can Air. Guy answer a question? Did he know before he wrote his last letter that the £13,000 credit consisted mainly of stocks on hand and advances to consumers? (Yes or no.) If he knew, why did he misrepresent to the consumers that the board “keeps in hand” £13,000 that could be returned to consumers? Can he reply without raising a smoke screen about “innerorgans,’’ paying rates in Palmerston North, Adolph Hitler, and all the rest of the puerile, camouflaging nonsense.

Time is now vindicating the wisdom of the Feilding Borough in selling its electricity plant to the board. People are beginning to realise this. If we had kept it, we would have been saddled with a bankrupt department, if we had tried to keep pace with the lower prices of the board. I, too, shudder at the prospect, now happily vanished. Hastings, a much larger town than Feilding, strikes a startling confirmatory note. Although its larger size better enabled it to reduce its charges, and although it Btarted its supply with Diesel engines, as ours, it sold out to the Power Board over there, after twenty-three years’ experience and nine years after the Power Board had commenced. It wisely saw the impossibility of continuing with such competition.—l am, etc., SCRUTATOR.