WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 5 August 1925, Page 4

WELLINGTON TOPICS

TILE STATE'S BALANCE SHEET. BUSINESS .MAN’S INTERPRETATION. (Special to “Guardi-ji”.)

WELLINGTON, August 3. The business men of Wellington do ’ not regard the Hon. J. Xoswortliv as 1 a heaven born financier, and some of them have old-standing grievances against him in connection with his administration of the Department of Agriculture; hut they are practically unanimous in declaring the Budget he presented to the House of Representatives Inst week was the frankest and dearest exposition of the finances of the Dominion they have seen for many a long year. Whether this compliment has been earned by the Minister himself or by the officers of the Treasury is not of much consequence, since Mr Nosworthv has accepted the responsibility for the publication of the figures and later on will be justifying them in the eyes of the country. Meanwhile it is interesting to hear w’nat business men have to sav about the position. One of these this afternoon, a gentleman with political ns well as commercial experience, after commending the Minister for eschewing much of the high-faultin' language in which some of his predecessors had wrapped up what should have been plain demonstrations of fact, said he had found the statements of the Dominion’s liabilities and assets set out in propel form tiic most illuminative of all the > tables in the Budget. j A Til BEE PER CENT MARGIN. This table, the business man went on to say, purported to be the State’s balance sheet showing the Dominion s financial position on March .‘ll last in the orderly way that a company or a firm or it private trader would he expected to exhibit his affairs. Ihe . items were not too numerous to he ■ quoted. On the debt side there were ordinary debt £119.93!!.959; war debt £70,031,722 ; State Advances debt,, L'dl UK),ISO; and discharged soldiers debt £9,909,980. Total £227,314 .047. On the credit side, cash and invest- ( monts (reserve funds. Hank of New Zealand shares, etc) £ 10,709.15 J; | sinking funds accrued £13.402,939; loans and advance's outstanding (discharged soldiers, Slate advances, etc) £41,301,00!); revenue earning and trading accounts (railways, telegraphs.

etc.), L’91.092,9(53; lands and forests (frown Lands, State Forests, etc). £72,395,239 : indirectly productive expenditure (roads ami public building, etc., £20,977,903; immigration C 2.925. tie) £31,903.37(1. Total £233.911,(592. Setting the two totals one against the other, they revealed, this authority continued, a surplus ol £0.030.035, a margin of less than 3 tier cent between tins liabilities ami the assets of the country, which probably would disappear altogether it the assets were submitted to a strict examination. . NEED FOR PRODUCTION AND j ECONOMY. | “f do not wish to suggest lor a moment,” the critic explained, ■ that ( the Dominion is approaching insolvency. That would he ridiculous. He- ( hind the public wealth—that is the surplus between the State’s liabilities j and its assets, some C 0,000.00 ( there is the private wealth of tho | country, some C(500,000,1)00 or Cioo- - which goes on increasing j year by year, and always is available to the State by means of loans and taxation. It is the war debt that has reduced the surplus of assets over liabilities to such a narrow margin, and though We may develop its existence we cannot grudge a penny of the expenditure in maintaining our own liberties and the existence ol the Empire. All that goes without saying. But another table in the Budget is fraught with scarcely le*s significance. It shews that il is til. - large increase in the prices of our exported products and not an increase in their volume that is enabling us ; to hear our war burdens with no more inconvenience that we are experiencing. Between the calender years IPM and 1921. this table shows, tho i volume of wool exported from the Bominion declined (i per cent while ils value increased by (U per <ent. The same with f riven meat. Its volume declined by II per cent and its value < h v (12 per cent. Butter and cheese j increased in volume, the former hy 192 per cent and the latter by 95 per) > cent, hut their increase in value was much greater, 399 per cent and 174

per cent respectively. TIOW THE MONEY GOES. Again the critic wished to be no pessimist. He believed that the prices of the Dominion’s staple products would he maintained at payable prices for ma :i v years to come. But lie thought the plain facts of Hie position demanded a great deal more strenuous economy Ilian was being practised hy either the Government or the public. IL might he difficult to advise private individuals .on this delicate subject-, as a man's circumstances were rarely known even to his nextdoor n •ighhour ; hut with the Governnvent it was different. This was election year and the temptations placed before Ministers were many and great, perhaps the annual increase in the public expenditure was inevitable, last year it amu tin led to over a million and a quarter, luit some time ago .Mr Y'.isxey under pressure found ways of effecting savings running into two or three millions and the country was all the better lor the experience. It was in the multiplication of comparatively trifling grants and subsidies and services, the btidness man said, that the expenditure mounted no. The butter people had not had the face to ask for the continuance of their subsidy ; hut the wheat people liad got theirs renewed, and now the dairy farmers were asking the Government, among other things, to pay for the testing of their own cows. That surely was mendicancy run mad among one of the most happily situated sections of tho eomimmitv.