RAILWAYS FINANCES

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1362, 13 February 1912, Page 4

RAILWAYS FINANCES

Thb Minister for Railways has bwn nialiing soim; stahemnnls about vuihviiy finance that require a footnote to prevent them from lieinp; really misleading. We know, of course, that he is not to lilame; he gives out only what he can get from the Head Office. His statement amounts to this: that the. revenue for the ton months just past is a little ahead of the estimate, and that ho anticipates a gross revenue of £'.5,600,000 for the year. He leaves us in the dark as to what is happening on the expenditure side. The figures for the 10 months have not been made public, but the figures for the first nine months (40 weeks) were given in last week's Onsetle, as we briefly noted on Friday. It will bo as well to give the figures for the first '10 weeks of the vcars 1909-10 1910-11, and 1911-12: "

Net Revenue. Eipend. revenue. £ \n j* 1009-10 ... 2,jnG,952 1,673,004 733.18S 1910-H ... 2,000,138 1,722,41)0 583,!U8 1011-12 ... 2,731,157 1,801,728 932,-131 It will be. seen that while the net revenue for the period in 1910-11 exceeded the amount in 1909-10 by exactly £150,000 the advance for'lOll--12 over 1910-11 is only £48,483, or less than one-third what it was. Looking down the gross revenue column it will be seen that the £200,000 betterment recorded at this time last year has been far from maintained. This time it is less than £130,000. At the same time the increase in gross expenditure is far greater than ever. Had the growth shown in 1910-11 been maintained, the net revenue for the period in 1911-12 would have been £1,033,948. Actually it was £101,517 short of this amount. Why is this ? It is not explained by the unfortunate check in the Southern revenue. We must look to the expenditure side for explanation. Of course the third column shows a rise of £50,000 in net revenue for the nine months, but at the same time the interest bill increases very largely every year. The really bad fact is that it is entirely through maintaining the higher scale of fares that the wastefulness on the expenditure side is partially concealed. The last three months of the year—-January, February, and March—may improve the position; but the case for a thorough overhaul of the Department remains.