SING A SONG OF SAVINGS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 174, 10 August 1937, Page 6

SING A SONG OF SAVINGS

When last week announqing the figures of State revenue and expenditure for the first quarten (ended 30th June) of the current financial year the then aeting-Prime Minister, the Hon. Peter Fraser} took occaeion to point with pride to the fact that during that period the doposits om tho P.O. Savingp Bank had gone up by some £1,400,000, while at the end of the periqd they were some £oi-million in excess of those shown t on the corresponding date last year. These are no doubt very impressivelooking figures calculated to give pr oof to the unthinking of the wonderful access of prosperity. that has fol lowed on a change of Government. The gflt is, however, a little bit rubbed otf the gingerbread if we look back a few years to see how things were moving then. As the Year Hook shows, P.O. Savings Bank deposits touched their lowest point in the last decade at £42-million in Marcb, 1933. A year later they were up by £2|-million, and another year later by another £4$-million, and at March, 1936, by yet another ^ £3J-million . Thus during the last three years of the previous Administration the aggregate advance was £10|million. Of those three years, too, it was only during the last that there were any reliable indications of the returning prosperity that has since developed into something of a mild boom under the influence of vastlyimproved returns upon our exportable products. For the 1936-37 financial year — the first of the new Governme nt — these returns were up on those for 1936-36 by some £35-million, whi ch, put into circulation, largely ao counts for the tuilk in the Post Office coco-nut. In oonsidering these Post Office Savings Bank figures, however, it is necessary to bear in mind that an appreciable, probably a very substantial, proportion of the accretions is due to big deposits — some running up, as high as £2,000, the interest-bearing limit—made by folks, especially by trustees of deceased estates, at a loss to see how their money could be otherwisp and permanently invested without danger* of being subjected to "cuts" of «either principal or interest, or of both. It is only. fair to the .present Government to say that this process begian to acquire volume when the Coalition Governm ent started out with its schemes of "readjustment" for both State and private securities. The probabilities are, however, that under The present Government the aggregate of deposits of this class has been materially increased. For no one can say that Mr Savage and his merry men have done mucb»to encourage confidence for investment in the industrial and commercial wage-paying undertakings to which this capital, or a large part of it, might otherwisl have been committed.