FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 472, 26 June 1890, Page 2

FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

The Financial Statement was being made in the House at 8 last night, and was being telegraphed through, the operator?, Messrs Percival and Cumming, transmitting copy beautifully clear and gratifying to the compositors. the work was not finished until after the Standard’s country edition had to be ready for delivery, we can only give lhe introduotory portion of the Statement. Sir Harry Atkinson commenced as follows :— Mr Hamlin, —The Committee will be pleased to learn that my anticipation last session of ending the financial year with a small surplus has been more than realised, and I am sure that the feeling of gratification will be increased when I have shown, as I propose to do before I sit down, that this surplus has arisen no less from the steady improvement in the condition of the colony than from the large economies and careful adminstra-tion which the present Parliament inaugurated aud has always insisted upon, and which the Government has to the best of its ability carried out. As signs of real and very satisfactory progress I may note particularly on the one hand that Crown Lands are being rapidly taken up for settlement in small areas, so that our agricultural holdings are increasing at as rapid a rate as they have at any time during our greatest prosperity, while on the other hand there has been an increase in the productiveness of most of our native industries which has been very marked.

Then, in the short space of the year just closed, it is evident that with continued prudence our financial difficulties are now well under control; that if our burdens in proportion to our numbers may eeem great, our strength and resources are far greater still and capable of infinite increase, and although we must not in any wa.y relax the care and vigilance with which we have watched our expenditure for the last three years and have striven to extend settlement and protect industry, yet we have reason to feel sure that prosperous times have again dawned upon us, and that, humanly speaking, it rests with ourselves to make this prosperity permanent, and indeed this dawn of prosperity would now be seen to expand into broad daylight if we would only look fairly at the bright side of things and feel as much on blessings and advantages which we have in this country as upon the temporary difficulties and troubles which beset us from time to time, upon which some are too fond of dwelling. It is no doubt a plain duty to keep the latter in view po far<as needed to ensure their remova’, bbt it is suicidal to ignore the countervailing facts, tha great and manifold advantage? which we have. I am induced to make these remarks because during the last few months I have been impressed, in talking to travellers both from Australia and England, with the false im* pres?ion which has been created ia those countries as to our condition. This was shown by the unfeigned astonishment of the gentlemen with whom I spoke at finding us not as they had expected, out at elbows in every sense, but in possession of every comfort and convenience of modern life, and at seeing that thia comfort and plenty were shared in by all classes. They found the people well educated, well fed, well clothed, and housed, working by long established custom only nine hours a day (which workmen in older countries are striving to attain by law), and ready and able to enjoy holidays; that we as a colony have been greatly damaged by this false impression that is abroad about our state. Every effort should be made to dispel it. Parliament can, I fear, do little, but the people and the Press might do much to correct it. In proportion as it is corrected, and the truth be known, we may expect again to see a steady inflow of the best class of settlers from elsewhere, a class of competent settlers who come to stay, the very class which has made New Zealand what it is. EXPENDITURE OP YEAR 1889 90. Ordinary Revenue.—The estimated expenditure for the year 1889 90, including charges under special Acts and supplementary estimates, amounted to £4,150.703. The actual expenditure was £4,020,842. There was therefore an unexpended balance of the amount authorised of £28,860. There are no items in this expenditure of so exceptional nature as to require my calling the attention of the Committee specially to them. REVENUE OF THE YEAR 1889 90. Ordinary Revenue,—l estimate (my estimate of course included the primage duty) to receive during the year a total ordinary revenue of £4,087,800. The actual amount received was £4,209,247. The total revenue therefore exceeded the estimate by £21,447, the Customs were less than the estimate by £49,126, the stamps exceeded the estimate by £24>755> and the Railways by £63,340.

The estimated expenditure of the Land Fund was ,£128,149. he actual expenditure was Of the expenditure there was paid to local bodies for rates on Crown lands £11,684, and .£18,159 in respect of receipts from deferred payment lands. The actual receipts are .£87,692, as against ,£136,100 estimated. The deficiency would have been less by if land to that value which was sold had been paid for in cash instead of as it was in scrip issued for military servants and under the Forest Trees Planting Encouragement Act. Ordinary Revenue. —The surplus with which we began the year was after paying oft',£so,ooo of the deficit at the 31st March, 1888. The amount available to meet expenditure was ,£4,237,018, and the total expenditure having been £4,121,841, there was a surplus for the year of £115,074, including primage duty amounting to £56,826. I expressed a hope when the Primage Duty was imposed, notwithstanding the fact that it was only estimated to produce about £116,000 in two years, that I should be able within that period to pay off the whole balance of the deficit of £128,605 which stood at the end of the year 1887-88, unprovided for. At the end of last financial year, the result of which wearenow considering, the Primage Duty had only been in force 22 months, and the amount it had reached was only £101,958, yet I have found myself in a position to pay off the whole of the £1,208,605 to which 1 have alluded some months within the period originally anticipated. The final result for the year, after paying what was left unpaid of the deficit of £128,605, namely £78,605, is a balance of £36,569 with which to begin the current year.

The outstanding liabilities at the end of 1889-90 were less than those of the previous year by £15,186. They were also less than the avq-age liabilities of the last nine years by £36,783, and less than in 1881 when the present system was begun by £38,362.

These facis are a complete answer to those persons who, professing to be well informed, are either so ignorant, or so disingenuous, as to talk of the surplus of last year as being manufactured by holding over liabilities at the end of the financial year.