The Daily News. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1922. REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 February 1922, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1922. REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE.

In view of all that has been said of late concerning the large economies that are being instituted by the Government in various State departments the public naturally devote more, than ordinary attention to the quarterly returns of revenue and expenditure. It is, of course, not to be expected that the full effect of the retrenchment scheme will be shown until at least a year or so hence, but inasmuch as the Treasury claims that at October 12 last the economies actually effected amounted to nearly two and a half millions, and that since that date further economies to the extent of over a million and a half have been effected, it might reasonably have been expected that at the close of the December quarter the Consolidated Fund should have evinced a more satisfactory condition than has been the ease of late. It will, therefore, be an unpleasant surprise to those who have been retying on the Dominion's finances exhibiting evidence of having been placed on a mpre favorable basis, to find that matters are worse instead of better, although the ordinary expenditure was less for the December quarter by slightly over £303,000 as compared with the corresponding quartei’ of 1920, departmental cost showing a reduction of £625,516, but against this somewhat small yet welcome saving has to be placed a fallingoff in revenue of nearly a million and three-quarters, due largely to the decreased yield of the Customs revenue, in spite of the new tariff. Admitting that the figures of the previous year for the nine mc<jths ending December 31 were abnormally large, yet a drop of over two and a-half millions is a serious matter. The public may be expected to be grateful that at last a check has been placed on the annual departmental expenditure, which has risen from ten millions in 1916 to nearly twentyone and three-quarter millions in 1921, while the revenue only expanded by six millions—that is, from ten to sixteen millions. The main point that has to be grasped with referenc e to the current year’s finances is that for the nine months to December 31 last there is a deficit of nearly five and a half millions, so that it is easy to believe in the Treasury being practically empty, and this deplorable state of affairs arising despite a cash balance brought forward on April 1, 1920. of nearly five millions. All that remained of that balance on January 1 of the present year was less than twenty-three thousand pounds, so that not only has the whole of the current revenue been absorbed, but nearly the whole of the previous year’s cash balance, together with over two and a quarter millions realised from repayments from other funds. The income tax has still to come in, and will, of course, swell the Consolidated Fund, and by a clever arrangement. of figures a surplus may be shown at the close of the financial year on March 31 next, yet, however desirable it may be to exhibit the financial returns of the Dominion in as favorable a light as possible, the faet remains that for the quarter ending on December 31 last the ordinary expenditure was over a. million and a half above the revenue. Such a state of affairs cannot be considered either as satisfactory or what might reasonably have been expected after all that retrenchment is supposed to have effected. It is now nearly half way to the end of the fourth quarter of the financial year, arid the revenue is still falling. If the Treasurer succeeds in making both ends meet that is as much as can be hoped for.