HIGH EXCHANGE COST

Taranaki Daily News, 28 January 1933, Page 10

HIGH EXCHANGE COST

WELLINGTON CITY FINANCES. LOSS OF £25,000 INDICATED. The Wellington. City Council will be about £25,000 worse off next financial year through the raising of the rate of exchange. The Mayor, Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, said that it could already be computed that there would be an increase of between £15,000 and £16,000 a year in the council’s interest bill overseas. Other indirect effects of the exchange rate would bring the aggregate to about £25,000, in Mr. Hislop’s opinion. In addition to this there were other items on which the council s revenue would be reduced and the ultimate effect for ordinary set purposes would be that the revenue next year would be about £30,000 less than for the current year. The Mayor remarked that the result appeared to be that the amount available for carrying on the services of the city next year would be only half the amount that was expended in the year before the present council took office. “It is clear that after March 31 next the council will not be able to carry on any unemployment relief work and such work will have to be financed and controlled by the Government, said the Mayor. ‘Last year the council spent £BOOO out of revenue alone on unemployment relief and now the exchange wipes out any possibility of the council carrying any unemployed in the future. Perhaps Mr. Coates, as Minister of. Finance, will find that the burden he has created hy his exchange inflation policy will be passed on to him to carry.” Mr. Hislop said he considered there was inequality in the exchange inflation. Farmers, irrespective of their resources, were going to benefit at the expense of others. It was well known 'that there were large numbers of New Zealand farmers . who had sums of £lO,OOO, £20,000, £50,000, or even more on , deposit, i