FIVE QUESTIONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 505, 7 November 1928, Page 10

FIVE QUESTIONS

SIR JOSEPH CHALLENGED £60,000,000 LOAN SCHEME Press Association INVERCARGILL, Tuesday. The Reform candidate for Invercargill, Mr. S. Morell Macalister, has issued the following challenge to Sir Joseph Ward: (1) To show that there will not be a large annual loss on the money to be borrowed for the State Advances Office, namely, £ 00,000,000, borrowed on the terms he proposes and lent out at 42 per cent. (2) To show how he can make up even the loss admitted by him out of sinking fund payments and interest thereon and yet have adequate sinking funds for the loan. (3) To say whether sinking funds on loans for the State Advances Office should not be adequate to repay those loans on maturity if such loans are borrowed for the same term as the money is lent out, seeing that borrowers from the office pay sinking fund payments to the Government. (4) To show that his extraordinary suggestion that sinking fund and interest should be taken into account in making up loss in the annual charges would not. if divulged to London investors, seriously damage the credit of the Dominion. (.5) To say whether, if what he terms sinking fund is to be available to make up losses in annual charges, such fund can in any sense be properly called a sinking fund.