SOUTH AFRICAN BUDGET.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1398, 26 March 1912, Page 5

SOUTH AFRICAN BUDGET.

SURPLUS OP .8416,000. By Telegraph—Press AesociatiDn-Cosyrisht Cape Town, March 24. The Union Budget has been tabled. It shows a surplus of ,&l-IC,OOO. The national debt amounts to .£111,237,000. Fresh taxation is anticipated in 1913. UNION FINANCE IN 1911. In its annual financial review. "The limes" said of South Africau affairs:— When the Botha Government assumed office on May 31, 1910, and Mr. H. C. Hull, formerly Treasurer of the Transvaal, took control as first Minister of Finance for tho Union, it inherited from tho four colonial Governments cash revenue balances of £X,iTifii9; loan fund balances of very nearly three millions sterling; a permanent debt of 105 millions; and a floating debt of .£9,700,141. Practically the whole of the cash revenue balances has sines been applied to the redemption of floating debt. The remainder of the floating , debt, to tho amount.of about J;8,300,COO, of which the great bulk consists of four per cent. Capo Treasury bills and debentures, will be consolidated in the permanent debt of the Union as opportunity occurs. When this has been accomplished the total debt of the Union will amount to apprrximately .£115,000,000, of which very nearly one-half is at 3 per cent; some" 27 millions at 31; 0E22.522.00n at 4; .£2,000,000 at 4] ; and nearly .£600,000 at 5 per cent. Tho five per cent, stock was issued in Cape Colony from time to time some- 30 years ago at a timo of extreme financial depression, and was endorsed as "perpetual." For many years the Capo Sinking Fund Commissioners entered the market and bought in the slock a.q opportunity offered, paying as much as ,£lO9 . per cent., and an average price over a lonsr term of years of about X 145. Mr. Hull lias now announced his intention of rcilcciniiiE the perpetual annuities at par, but intends to allow a certain number of years to elapse before exercising tho right he claims.

Mr. Hull has been invariably fortunate as a Treasurer. In the Transvaal he was able to announce in three successive years fiirnlnses relatively Ri'gantic. It appears highly probable that when the current financial year closes on March 31 he will command a surplus of half a million sterling.