BRITISH FINANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24836, 9 February 1942, Page 6

BRITISH FINANCE

TOOSPECTS FdR YEAR " NOT UNPROMISING " (Rec. 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 7. The financial prospects for 1942 and beyond are described by The Times as "hot unpromising." "Already it is clear that the expenditure and the revenue will both exceed the '. estimates," The Times says. "Expenditure is how at the rate of more than £12,000,000 a' day, and the total thai will have :to : be financed domestically by. taxation and borrowing at home may. be several hundred millions oyer ,the £3,700,000,000 provided for'last April. Revenue was. estimated to yield nearly £400,000,000 1 more than last year. The increase so far in ordinary revenue is £520,00Q,000, and,, provided the present flow is maintained up to 1 the end of next month, the gap to be filled by borrowing should not greatly exceed the original Gstifflflt^ "Savings have been buoyant during 1941. Subscriptions to all forms of Government securities were 25 per centi higher in the last quarter than in the corresponding quarter of 1940, and the improvement in genuine savings as distinct from, the transfer of investments was certainly very much greater. Other details, both encouraging and discouraging, would be necessary to any complete picture; but, with the increased yield of taxation to be expected from the expanding national income and from the full operation of the taxes imposed last April and with the maintenance, if. no more, of the level of real savings achieved in 1941, the outlook for the coming year and even beyond is not unpromising." The Times points-out that the task of paying for *the war is not strictly or mainly fiscal. "It is a task of social and economic organisation," it says, " which must, enlist powers and capacities that lie well beyond the jurisdiction of the Exchequer." ,