NEW ZEALAND LOANS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21735, 29 August 1932, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND LOANS.

The Financial News, though evidently sympathetic to the object for which the Minister of Finance for the Dominion, accompanied by the Secretary of the Treasury, is about to visit England, does not hold out the hope that a conversion of New Zealand loans will be productive of a “spectacular saving.” If it be the case that, as this authority says, the credit of New Zealand on the market at the present time is approximately on a 4f per cent, basis, the relief to the taxpayers of the Dominion through a conversion operation will be smaller than those who have been investigating the loan position will have anticipated. No doubt, the Government has been fortunate in the past in being able to raise loans at Home on generally favourable terms. It would have been to the advantage of the Dominion, as we must now realise, if funds had not been so readily available, because the existence of stringent terms would have curtailed our bbrrowings and money would not have been lavished, as it has been, > on unreproduetive undertakings, the losses bn which have contributed in no small degree to the embarrassment of the Government, The credit of New Zealand under successive Governments has been so good in the past that it was an exceptional experience for her when her loans were not fully subscribed by the public. The war loans, funded at the equivalent of 5 per cent., constitute the most onerous of the overseas debts of the Government, and it must be in respect of these that the Minister of Finance will approach the British Treasury. A conversion of these loans, on the “ reasonably favourable terms ” upon which the Financial News thinks that conversion of New Zealand issues may be effected, would be a transaction of considerable moment.