REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17483, 27 November 1918, Page 4

REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE.

The Minister of Finance bas estimated the revenue of the country for the current financial year on an extremely conservative basis. He forecasts that the total revenue will be £20,185,200. This is less by £21,021 than the receipts of the past financial year. The " veriest novice in finance," to whom Sir Joseph Ward refers disparagingly in another connection in the Budget, would have little hesitation in holding that a financial year which will include nearly five months of peace and in which will be witnessed a resumption of unrestricted movements of shipping, should certainly produce a revenue in excess—even largely in excess—of that yielded during a financial period such as that terminated on the 31st March last. He would be fortified in his opinion, moreover, if he had before him the figures showing the state of the public accounts at the close of six months of the year for which the estimate is made. For these figures show that the six months' revenue was £1,007,140 in excess of that for the corresponding period of last year. If Sir Joseph Ward's estimate is to be even approximately correct, we must look for a comparative drop in the revenue of over a million in the concluding six months of the year. The final half of the financial year is, however, invariably the more favourable from the point of view of the Treasury and the change from war conditions to peace conditions, accompanied as it should be and, we imagine, must be, by a great increase in the import trade of the dominion, should make the revfenue figures for the concluding months of the current year very distinctly more favourable than those for the corresponding period of last year. It is impossible, therefore, to suppose that the Minister of Finance has not greatly under-estimated the revenue for the year. The Budget does not supply detailed figures showing how the estimate of expenditure, which Sir Joseph Ward calculates at £20,006,235, is made up. Upon this basis, the expenditure for the year will exceed that for last year by nearly £4,876,000. Even when w/e allow for a greatly increased liability in respect of interest and sinking fund and for the fact that provision on a j large scale must be made for the payment of war pensions, this figure will probably be found to be considerably in excess of actual requirements. The Minister of Finance estimates, for instance, that the cost of war pensions during the financial year will be £1,500,000. As the payments on this account for six months of the year were £458,724, there should be a considerable margin between the official estimate for the year and the actual disbursements. Upon the whole, it may be suggested that the Minister has largely underestimated the revenue and to some considerable extent over-estimated the expenditure for the year, and that consequently the balance at the end of the year will be greatly in excess of the modest £178,965 which Sir Joseph Ward anticipates he will have at his disposal. If the balance thus secured is put to a use similar to that to which a considerable proportion of the surplus revenue of the years of war has been applied—to the strengthening of what the Minister of Finance calls the "revenue reserve," now amounting to over nine and a-half millions—the disposal of it will afford special cause for satisfaction.