THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1921. THE PUBLIC ACCOUNTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18199, 21 March 1921, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1921. THE PUBLIC ACCOUNTS.

There is fortunately no question that, when the public accounts for the currenti financial year aro closed on the last day of this month, it will be found that there is a very substantial credit balance. The abstract which the Minister of Finance has just issued of the receipts and expenditure for the completed eleven months of the year show a balance in favour of the receipts of £2,670,146 for that period. For tie corresponding eleven months of 191920 the balance of receipts over expenditure was £344,768. By this test, therefore, the figures for the current year are the more favourable to the extent of £2,825,378. One fact alone, however, more than accounts for this, that being the exceptionally heavy importation of goods this year, the effect of which has been a comparative increase of £3,655,641 in the receipts for Customs duties in the eleven months. It is now recognised that there has actually been over-importation and that there must be a marked decline in the

volume of imports this year—a decline which is, indeed, already making itself manifest—so that the large revenue from Customs duties in the current financial year is to be regarded as wholly exceptional. When the public accounts for the eleven months are viewed from another angle, they show that the revenue for the period exceeded those for the corresponding period of the preceding year by £6,338,226 and that the comparative increase in the expenditure has been £4,012,848. The principal factor in the expansion of the revenue has, as we have indicated, been the abnormal increase in the Customs receipts. The revenue from stamp and death' duties has increased by £462,540 as compared with that for eleven months of the preceding year; that from postal and telegraph charges by £714,986; that from the railways by £2,168,889; and that from the land tax by £111,981. The yield from the income tax for the eleven months of the current year was £60,771 below that for the corresponding period of the preceding year, but not much more than one-half of the proceeds of this tax seems to have come to hand within the eleven months and it may be expected that the receipts in March will turn the balance the other way. The expenditure side of the account shows that the payments in respect of interest and sinking fund for the eleven months of the current year were £741,986, and those' under special Act of the Legislature £275,056, in excess of the corresponding payments for eleven months of 1919-20. It follows that three millions, more or less, of the amount by which the expenditure has been swelled during the present year are represented by increases in the ordinary departmental appropriations. The increased salary sheets and wages bills doubtless account in large measure for this. The comparative increase in the expenditure by the Railway Department amounts to £1,336,220; that by the Post and Telegraph Department to £844,893; and that by the Education Department to £331,093. In most of the departments, however, an increase in expenditure is shown. The measure in which this increase has been avoidable is, of course, problematical. But it is imperative that waste in the public services should be severely checked in face of the certainty that the revenue in. the coming year will fall far short of that for the financial yearn which .ends next week.