RUMANIA JOINS INFLATION RACE

Chronicle (Levin), 11 April 1946, Page 5

RUMANIA JOINS INFLATION RACE

GO VERNMBNT ADOPTS MUNTHL. BUDGETS Received Wednesday, 10.20 p.m. LONDON, April 10. Rumania has been forced to adopr monthly Budgets, hy runaway inflation, says the Daily Mail's Bucharest correspondent. Prices, especially of gola, make wild leaps upward, at least 10 per cent. daily. A gold sovereign, wortn 650,000 lei last December, broughr 1,100.000 today and hy tomorrow will have soared still higher. Budget maxing in such circumstances is impossioie. The Pinance Department did its besv recently and drew up a Budget for th's year, which reached the fahulous totax j of 66 followed hy 14 noughts lei, bur| the lei continued to depreciate so rap i idly that the Government abandonex I the idea of an annual Budget and fixea j one month as the greatest time for which events could he foreseen. The Government of Hungary, wherc ^ inflation has run wild, has announced ai plan to put the country 's finances and | economy on a sound basis, says the ; Times' Vienna correspondent. The preamhle afflrms that it will be neces- | sary for the State, firstly, to keep the j key position in industry for itself ; secondly, to direct private enterprise • i thirdly, to exercise strict control over the banks. The number of State officials i will he reduced to the 1938 figure, and the army will he reduced to 15,000. The Finance Minister has been given a month to introduce a new system of taxation, hy which large and easily-won incomes will he more heavily taxed. The Government hopes to end inflation by the end of 1916. Coal, alumimumJ and oil will he nationalised by August 1 and land reform is to be completed by May 1.