APPLICATIONS FOR LOANS BY LOCAL BODIES CONTINUES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 54, 21 October 1949, Page 3

APPLICATIONS FOR LOANS BY LOCAL BODIES CONTINUES

Applications were again in excess of £10,000,000, said the report of the Local Government Loans Board on the financial year 1948-49. The report commented that activities of local authorities in capital programmes had not abated from the high level of the previous two years. The loans approved totalled £10,130,298, compared with £10,347,679 in 1947-48. Transport was an item which showed a substantial increase in the new loans, this being £1,353,366, compared with £54,480 the year before. Loans for permanent housing increased from £86,110 to £227,950, and for transit housing dropped from £53,500 to £28,150. Hospital works was another major loan items, totalling Electricity supply loans were £2,269,000—an increase of £925,400 on the previous year. A substantial portion of these loans was for rural reticulation. Since it was instituted 22 years ago the board has deal with applications involving £101,957,060, of which approximately £59,000,000 was for new works and £29,000,000 for redemption. Applications for £13,000,000 were referred back or declined. High costs of construction in recent years largely accounted for the fact that of the total sanctioned for new works £20,000,000 (nearly 34 per cent) had been in the last three years. Local authority debt had declined from a peak of over £72,000,000 in 1931 to £57,000,000, of which nearly £49,000,000 was domiciled in the Dominion.