STATE ADVANCES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23882, 9 August 1939, Page 8

STATE ADVANCES

THREE YEARS' OPERATIONS LOANS OF £14,000,000 RENTAL HOUSING FINANCE EXCLUDED 'From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, Aug. 8. Loans from the State Advances Department in the first three years of the administration of the present Government have amounted to £14,000,000, said the Minister in charge of the department (Mr H. T. Armstrong) during the Financial Debate in the House of Representatives to-night. This total, the Minister said, was exclusive of the amount advanced for the building of rental houses. There had been a good deal of criticism during the debate, Mr Armstrong said, on the amount lent by the State Advances Department on rural securities, but a comparison of the last three years of the last Government with the first three years of this would show a distinct advantage to this Government. In the three years before Labour came into power the amount lent to farmers was £351,500. In the next three years the total of all loans was £14,141,000. Of this, private individuals in towns borrowed £6,600,000 and private individuals in the country borrowed £5,028,000. In addition to this, there were loans to local bodies totalling £2,900,000, mainly for building houses. This total of more than £ 14,000,000 did not include the building of rental houses. From 1932 to 1935 the total of loans of all sorts from the department was only £789,000.

"During nearly five years under the last Government," said the Minister, "there came into the State Advances Department as repayments from mortgages and others £5,189,000. Therefore, more than £4,500,000 that came back into the department was confiscated by the then Government to help with the Budget. We have never taken anything out of the State Advances Department. We have pumped millions into it."