P
24
K
to that presently exercised by the Commissioner of
Banking in respect of licensed banks.
THE PUBLIC FINANCES
63
This brings me to the present state of our public finances, which I will deal with very briefly. This year's total revenue is now expected to exceed
the original estimate by a quite considerable amount,
perhaps by as much as £1 billion. Almost all largely
due to bouyant land sales. A large part of
A large part of the increased
revenue is being absorbed in increased expenditure on
both recurrent and capital accounts. We have, for
example, incurred additional expenditure, not provided
for in the Estimates, as a result of the 1978 civil service
salary awards, and of the decision to reduce the qualifying
age for the old age allowance scheme, from 75 to 70, in one
step rather than two as originally planned. It is, however,
on the capital account that we expect a substantially
higher level of expenditure than provided for in the
approved Estimates. This is largely accounted for by the
Public Works Programme as such, and Housing. Higher
prices account for a part of this increase, but we
have also made good progress on existing contracts and
earlier starts on new projects. It is too early to
indicate with any precision the likely budget outturn,
but there can be little doubt that there will again be
a surplus this year.