PRIME MINISTER’S SPEECH

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8654, 12 February 1914, Page 5

PRIME MINISTER’S SPEECH

THE FIGURES QUOTED. Yesterday tile Minister for Finance pointed out that some obvious errors occurred in the telegraphed report of the Prime Minister’s speech at To Aroha. lief erring to the paragraph dealing with short-dated debentures, Mr Allen explained, first, that the special difficulty was that the eight millions was in the hands of the speculator, and not in the hands of the investor; and the speculator would not renew it. “So we have to raise new loans to pay off this eight millions, with all tho consequent cost of underwriting, brokerage charges, stamp duty etc., and every time a short-dated loan is renewed, this process has to be gone over again; and there is where the cost comes in. As t<) the four and a-half million loan, those figures aro right. It cost tin tho first instance £144,000, but it was a two-year loan, and when it became due, after running the course of two. years, the cost occurred again, and this is approximately the actual result: That it will cost probably another £230,000 to £240,000 to put it in the same position as the loan that I raised in London twelve months ago. The total cost, therefore, of this four and a-half million loan to put it in the same position as the loan that was floated a year ago would Ire approximately £380,000, whereas the total charges and expenses of the three million loan, which runs for thirty or fifty years, were £156,000. If the four and a-half millions had been, three millions, tho extra cost of raising it as a short-dated loan would be approximately £IOO,OOO. There are some obvious misprints du the paragraph dealing with more liberal advances. Tho report says that tho Government proposes to increase advances to workers from £4OO to £SOO. That is clearly a misprint. The maximum is £450. by law, and we propose to go up to the maximum of £450. And then there is another very obvious misprint in this paragraph in reference to advances to local authorities. We do not propose to increas* tho amount from £2OO to £SOO, but from £2OOO to £5000.”