REHABILITATION LOAN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 95, 24 August 1942, Page 5

REHABILITATION LOAN

PROVISION FOR RETURNED MEN

BUSINESSES AND lIOMKS

As men reiurn from the war aml are discharged from further service they are turning to the problems of setting up homes or businesses. There is a steady stream of applicants for the assistance the Government has planned to give them through the Rehabilitation Hoard. These benefits seem to be fairly widely known.

The State Advances Corporation, which acts as the agent of the Rehabilitation Board, has' three main classes of loans for suitable returned men. On a business it will lend up to £500, for an approved house up to £1500 with £100 for furniture, and on a farm up to £3000, with a further £1250 for stock. The loan is repayable at the rate of 4Ys per cent spread' over 15 to 30 years, according to the mature of the security. Some complaint is made that 2 per cent of the purchase money is deducted by the corporation as a reserve fund, but it is pointed out that this, sum is rather more th.an offset in the first year when, subject to regular payments and the fulfilment of the terms of the loan, payments are reduced from 4% per cent to 2 per cent. For the two following years they are 3 per cent instead of 4% per cent.

The majority of applications are put through with as much speed as could reasonably be expected. Loans for furniture, 'which are the most common applications at the present time, usually go through in about a fortnight, and the same time is; occupied over loans for houses or farms. To a charge that the department's valuations are usually much too low, so that the owners prefer to do business at better prices elsewhere, the reply is made that the department has to look well forward in dealing with long-term loans and: is concerned to protect the interests of the returned men by seeing that they are not called on to p;iy fancy prices.