THE POSTAL REPORT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1762, 12 July 1888, Page 4

THE POSTAL REPORT.

The Postal report shows receipts for the financial year £311,008, an increase of £5148; the expenditure £270,635, a decrease of £21,657. The revenue was £40,973 in excess of the expenditure arising from an abnormal decrease in the expenditure under the head of conveyance of mails by sea, which amounted to no less than £18,669. Many economies have also been carried out during the year. The gratuitous work for the Government was as follows: —Free correspondence £71,965, Government telegrams £30,205, making a total earnings £213,790, or £143,144 more than the departmental expenditure. Ihe sutn of £22,984 was spent on telegraph extension. There were 39,377,774 letters dealt with and 1,853,394 telegrams. Thirty-eight offices were established. The total offices open were 1118. Twenty-two inland mail services were established, and the total is now 600. The length of telegraph lines has been increased by 100 miles, there now beiag 4646 miles of line and 11,375 miles of wire. Telephone subscribers number 2042, an increase of 112 ; last year the increase was 287, "With reference to the new agreement between the Imperial Post office and the principal Australian colonies foi the maintenance of a subsidised weekly mail service between the United Kingdom and Australia by the Peninsula and Oriental Company, the report says : "So far as the new arrangements affects New Zealand they are favorable. The colony has only to defray the cost of the homewards mails, and our payments for this year should be considerably less than one-half of the amount paid m 1887."