BUDGET SURPLUS EXCEEDS LORD SNOWDEN’S ESTIMATE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 375, 17 March 1932, Page 1

BUDGET SURPLUS EXCEEDS LORD SNOWDEN’S ESTIMATE.

£20,000,000 Less Revenue Outstanding Than Last Year.

(United Press Association. —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) (Received March 17, 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY, March 16. With nearly three weeks before the end of the Rnan-

cial year only £24,000,000 — £20,000.000 less than the corresponding date last year —remains to be received by the revenue authorities, thus assuring a balanced Budget as the closing weeks in the year are usually estimated to be heaviest for revenue production. There is every reason to believe that March 31 will see a Budget surplus, substantially above that estimated when Lord Snowden introduced the Budget last September. With this satisfactory

result in prospect, encouraging statements upon the British progress along the road to recovery were made by the two Cabinet Ministers, Mr Stanley Baldwin and Sir John Simon.

Mr Baldwin, speaking at Ilford, said: “ To-dav we are in a position when the Budget will balance. Borrowing on current account has stopped. I hope, forever. Two months ago we all felt the greatest anxiety about the stability of our currency: To-day people are looking to sterling in many parts of the world as the one standard and natural anchorage. The most remarkable feature of this remarkable winter ha - been the steadiness of retail prices. Production shows an improvement in the last quarter, after a continuance of the trend downwards for the preceding twenty-one months.” He had higher hopes himself, said Mr Baldwin, than he had had for some years. Sir John Simon, speaking at Norwich, stated that there was abundant evidence that the credit of Britain had been largely restored. The Foreign Office had better reason than anyone

else to know the effect produced on opinion abroad. “At Geneva and Paris, and in America, and everywhere in the world where doubts had arisen as to whether this old country was entering on its decline, new belief in the power of Britain to save herself has been established,” he said. “We have some distance to go before we return to prosperity, but the world believes to-day that Britain has the power to surmount her difficulties because the world has realised that Britain has the will to do so. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole -world to-day is very impressed with the recovery of Britain.” Sir John Simon referred to the deep impression abroad caused by the recent repayment six months before the due date of the £80,000,000 credits received last August to save the £ from France and America.