WAR AND GOLD SHARES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20049, 22 September 1939, Page 5

WAR AND GOLD SHARES

UNCERTAIN FACTORS

AUSTRALIAN POLICY LONDON, Sept. 11. Uncertainty about gold shares is causing general speculation. The Financial Times says that the great unknown factor for the Empire’s gold mines at the present stage is how the various Dominion Governments will deal with individual labour, import and cost of machinery, necessary supplies, and taxation problems.

“That is not a reason for selling gold shares,” it adds, “but it may make discrimination in fresh purchases advisable.”

The Financial Times declares: "Australiair gold mines are perhaps the ones for which the outlook is most tanlalisjngly uncertain. In Australian currency gold is now worth what,' seems 'to be the almost fantastic price of lOgns. an ounce, but as the Commonwealth Government has now forbidden the export of the metal it would not be surprising if it exacted direct or indirect toll before paying the mines for their gold.

“Income tax and company tax are being raised by the Budget introduced last week. In any case, Australian companies will no longer be able to make the extra exchange profit which some of them were recently securing by selling dollars forward against the shipment of gold to San Francisco.

"Further, they do not yet know what proportion of ihc profits earned in Australian currency they will be allowed to convert. into sterling—at the present rate of exchange— (o provide for dividends and cost of imported supplies."