RELIEF FOR THE MOMENT
ARRANGEMENTS made by the Finance Minister (Air Nash) for the conversion of Ihe loan of upwards of £17,000,000 which has just fallen due in London appear in themselves Io have worked out very satisfactorily. A new cash and conversion loan of £16,000,000 has been subscribed fully in London and the balance of the amount falling due has been provided in New Zealand. So far as the £16,000,000 converted is concerned, the relief gained is temporary. The latest date for the redemption of the new loan is 1945 and within the next five or six years other and considerably larger amounts of oversea debt, also fall due for redemption. Under the arrangement made, the loan of £16,000,000 is to be paid off by heavy annual instalments during the next five years. What is to be done about other oversea capital liabilities falling due concurrently, to which there must now be added the item of war costs, has vet to be disclosed.
It is not, of course, the fault of the present Government that the Dominion is faced by such an enormous mass of maturing obligations, but some arrangement presumably will have to be made under which repayment can be spread over a reasonable period of years. The war, by making some additional oversea borrowing inevitable, complicates very seriously the difficult position that already existed. Taking account only of the loan of sixteen millions which has just been converted, this country will be under the necessity of increasing its export surplus to some 14 or 15 millions a year. Provision for the redemption, by instalment payments or otherwise, of other maturing loans, and for war costs can be made only by enlarging still furl her the export surplus.
People who look a little way ahead no doubt would be glad to have an assurance from the Minister of Finance, on behalf of the Government, that the problem of our maturing and increasing oversea obligations is getting the serious practical consideration it so obviously demands,
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1940, Page 4
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336RELIEF FOR THE MOMENT Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1940, Page 4
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