BOROUGH LOANS.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13420, 18 March 1914, Page 5

BOROUGH LOANS.

A TOTAL OF EIGHT MILLIONS

!IOW THE MONEY HAS BEEN

SPENT.

(Speck! to "The Colonist.")

Wellington, March 16

Local bodies in New Zealand have pursued during the last ten years a very active policy in regard to expensive undertakings, such as electric tramways, drainage, and water supply, lighting, abattoirs, and street widening. The result is that on the latest calculation which has been made for a now edition of the Municipal Year Book about to be published the outstanding loans of boroughs amount to £8,357,964. This huge amoufat involves the payment annually of £470,715 in interest and sinking fund. The average rate of interest is 4.46 per cent., but ten years ago (when the indebtedness of boroughs was less than half of to-day's total) they paid nearly 5 per cent, as a rule. Further savings of interest are anticipated as the operation of the State Guaranteed Advances Act is extended. As an indication of the way in which .loan money is spent, the following analysis of last year's loan expenditure, totalling £889,182, -is instructive :— £ Footways and bridges 182,251 Drainage and sanitation 205,373 Waterworks 169,447 Tramways 61,224 Abattoirs and pounds 15,596 Lighting and power services 134,873 Other public works 103,985. Management, interest, and sundries 16,433 It is shown that just as loans have doubled in a decade the yearly receipts and spendings of the boroughs have also gone up in the same proportion.

CABLE NEWS.

[PrbsS Abhooiatios—CoPYAurar.]