Evening Post. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1913. A LOAN OF £3,500,000.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 38, 14 February 1913, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1913. A LOAN OF £3,500,000.

After the usual preliminaries of all Treasurers, "Reform" or "Anti-Reform" -—the hearty advertising of New Zealand's prosperity and resources— the Hon. Jamas Allen is receiving a loan of £3,500,000 (issued at £98), at 4 per cent, interest, thei.whole lo be repayable within thirty or forty years, at the option of investors. The Premier has described the transaction as "highly satisfactory," and we cannot imagine that any f Opposition critic, journalistic or otherwise, with the- memory of the Liberal five millions and four millions and a-half still painfully green, will dare to question Mr. Maesey's statement. By comparison with last year's two-year accommodation of £4,500,000 (at a total cost of at least 5 per cent, when all the charges are considered), Mr. Allen has certainly done very well. Spreading the discount of £2 and all underwriting and flotation charges (about £2 per cent., with other loans as a guide) over a term of thirty years, the aggregate annual cost to the taxpayers will be about 4$ fer cent.— a good enough bargain for these troublous times. The Government had to go to London at a bad time, when the market was still troubled by war and rumours of war, and it c&nnot* be said that the task was made easy by the procedure of this Administration's predecessors, The Westminster Gazette has declared that "New Zealand is overdoing it. The money market did not expect the colony to demand anything like threo millions. The natural effect has been to depress the market." This statement is surely a little highly-coloured. TWb country's requirements are only a fraction of the large demand for money at present, and it seems absurd to suppose that an application for £3.500,000 can "depress the market." The Timeu appears to strike the true note with a comment :— ' "The patience of the Stock Exchange underwriters is exhausted owing to the existing glut." New Zealand is only one of a number of borrowers) and if there is a depression New Zealand's responsibility is cbmparatively light. I However, whether the London criticism is fatherly or step-fatherly, the Massey Government inherited an absolutely unavoidable obligation to borrow at i least £3,500,000 this year. A sum of at I least £i,? 50,060 is required for public j works, and the balance for renewals. In the South Mr. George Fowlds gives an impression that he is indulging in unholy glee at the financial difficulties .to which the methods of his own political friends contributed. The Post ie certainly not tied to the "Reform" Government, but we firmly believe that the Massey Ministry is entitled to the sympathy of every fair-minded critic in the present financial circumstances. "The stringency of the money ma.rket," eaid Mr, Fowlde, "militated againet the popularity of tbe Government in the North, *as ib received a good deal of blame for the position. Local bodies had strongly condemned the Government for its attitude in regard to loans to local bodies, and come of the Government's most severe critics were men who previously were supporters of tho party it represented." It would be distinctly interesting to have definite reasons given against the Government for the "position." As for local bodies' loans, the Government found ilself saddled with commitments totalling about £500,000 at rates below the cost to the general taxpayers. The Government has made an honest effort to prevent the exploitation of tho whole public of New Zealand by sections of the public in this matter— and thorefore some friends have turned into' "severe critics," states Mr.' FowJds. Surely it must have been only ( cupboard love. If tho Government continues lo bo bravo enough to battle against that local greed which wants something at the expense of the "other fellow," it will at. least hold the respect of Ihe better class of opponents. It is possible, of course, that some former friends who are now "severe- critics" may have been lod to expect largesse from the statements of Mr. Maesey and some of his colleagues when in Opposition. Their words implied that they favoured an old order by which the "something for nothing" for the local bodies was greater than the amount available under tho law as amended towards the end of the Ward regime.