WAR EXPENSES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25173, 13 March 1943, Page 4

WAR EXPENSES

DETAILS TO DECEMBER 31 TOTAL OF £163,000,000 SPENT (F.0.P.R.) WELLINGTON, Mar. I*2. Some of the items of expenditure under the War Expenses Account were given in the House of Representatives to-day by the Minister in Charge of War Expenditure, Mr Adam Hamilton. Mr Hamilton said the expenditure in the account from the beginning of the war up to December 31 last amounted to £163,000,000. Of that total, the sum of £65,000,000 was spent on soldiers’ wages and their keep. Equipment had accounted for £33,000,000, and transport for another £6,000,000. The sum of £22,000,000 had been spent on the acquisition of land and the construction of buildings, ships, fortifications. and aerodromes for the armed forces.

Mr Hamilton said that possibly only the last of the items mentioned would be criticised. It amounted to only about 20 per cent, of the expenditure altogether and the other 80 per cent, was not likely to be criticised. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr S. G. Holland: You have another £40.000.000 to mention yet. Mr Hamilton said a large amount ot the' other expenditure had been on the housing of' American troops and the construction of stores and hospitals for their use. All the proposed expenditure was examined by the Supply Council and reported on by the Treasury before it came before tne War Cabinet and was finally approved. He claimed that the war expenditure was reasonably examined, although perhaps not so minutely as in peace times, but that was explained by the urgency of much of the work for defence and similar purposes.