LOCAL BODY DEBT

Waipa Post, Volume 43, Issue 3328, 28 July 1931, Page 6

LOCAL BODY DEBT

DOUBLED IN SEVEN YEARS.

BURDEN ON THE FARMING COMMUNITY.

The huge burden of local body debt on the farming community was emphasised at the annual meeting of the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce on Thursday last by the president (Mr L. M. Moss), who in his presidential address stressed the need for some reform. There were in New Zealand at 31st March, 1928, 686 local bodies actively functioning, said Mr Moss, and this number would be added to from year to year unless it was more generally realised that the system called for a check. The figures were available from the Year Book, and, without wearying his audience with the details, he thought the following figures would indicate the need for immediate reform: — (a) In ten years from 1919 to 1929 the total receipts of local bodies had more than trebled. ' (b) The rates collected doubled from £3,000,000 to approximately £6,000,000. (c) The expenditure more than trebled from £7,000,000 to £22,000,000, and the net debt increased from a sum of £24,000,000 to £58,000,000. (d) Increase per head of debt rose from £26 16s 6d to £45 13s Bd, and the annual loan charge from £1 5s 3d to £2 18s 6d.

As the Year Book for 1930 put it, continued Mr Moss, “within the last seven years the local body debt has more than doubled.

This is of especial moment to the farming community in times of falling prices, when the debt presses with greater severity on each acre of land in production. A table prepared by the Massey Agricultural College shows that while export prices in 1929 were 145 points, compared wtih 100 at the 1914 level, rural rates were 274, compared with 100 at the 1914 level. The further fall in prices since 1929 still further accentuated the burden on the producer. Mr Moss said it was a matter of surprise that this question had not received more atention from the farming community, because the ultimate weight of this increased indebtedness came back to the producer.