OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 260, 1 November 1928, Page 4

OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS.

SIR JOSEPH’S LOAN SCHEME. If the chief result of Sir Joseph’s loan proposal would be stimulation of thrift, thus increasing the capital available for industry, we could approve it, whether the added capital were to reach producers through the Government or through private investment channels. We have urged in the past that an effort should be made to add to the capital available for industrial development by presenting to the small investor safe and easy means of investment. But it appears to us that the effort to raise large local loans would not stop at diverting money from unproductive uses and luxuries. It would divert it also from existing productive and profitable enterprises. The ten millions marked for completion of railways could be obtained in London without difficulty if that were the total loan requirement. But Would it be? Sir Joseph Ward’s statement implies that the cost of completing hydro-electric enterprises is not included in this sum. Nor, we assume, are other public works—telegraph extension, irrigation, school building, and so on—now carried out with loan money. The definition pf the railway construction to be undertaken is not exact. What main lines are to be completed, what hew short lines are to be stopped, and what is to be done with the programme, of works listed as “railway improvements?” We fully agree that a clear plan of development according to time-table and with pre-ar-ranged finance is preferable; to a system of carrying on from year to J year. But we should prefer to have

details of the plan before agreeing that it could be covered by a total expenditure of ten millions. There are other factors also which tend to upset calculations, as Mr/ Coates has discovered in his efforts to keep to a schedule' in railway construction, hydro-electric development, and railway improvement. The Minister of Finance has profited by Mr. Coates’ experience, and he does not attempt to set a time-table for loan-tapering. If Sir Jospeh Ward can show the weak points in these schedule schemes, and can frame a schedule which will not stretch in years and millions, he will solve one of the greatest problems of State finance.— Wellington Evening Post.