HEAVY DEFICITS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26708, 1 March 1948, Page 7

HEAVY DEFICITS

FIRST BUDGETS FOR INDIA AND PAKISTAN Rec. 8 p.m. NEW DELHI, Feb. 28. The Indian Finance Minister, Mr Shanmukhan Chetty, presenting the Dominion of India’s first annual Budget announced an estimated deficit of more than £20,000,000. “I am confident that the nation will be able to meet the great challenge of the situation,” he said. Mr Chetty announced a revenue of £173,000,000 and an expenditure of £193,000,000. He calculated that new tax proposals would reduce the final Budget deficit to £BOO,OOO. In spite of the deficit, India will spend £102,000,000 on defence—more than half the estimated expenditure. In Karachi, the Finance Minister, Ghulam Mahommed, announced that Pakistan's deficit on its first Budget was estimated at £25,140,000. The Minister said the lack of industrial development, the 2,000,000 refugees in excess of evacuees from Pakistan, the disruption of banking, insurance, transport and communications, the disproportionately heavy burden of defence expenditure and the loss of strategic railways, were responsible.