2.
61
Public Finance and Business.
The strong position of British public finances is apparent in the latest official returns, which are those for the week ended on the 22nd of July. In that week national ordinary revenue was £20,394,746, or £2,340,007 more than in the corresponding week of 1938, while expanditure declined by £5,025,186 to £9,798,500. There was thus an excess of revenue of £10,596,246, compared with an excess of only £3,231,053 last year. Even after allowing for Defence borrowing, which, in the week in question, amounted to £7,750,000 for which there was no comparable item in the corresp- onding week last year there is still a surplus of £2,846,246 this year, or only some £500,000 less than last year. Receipts from income-tax and from Customs were higher in the week ending on the 22nd of July this year, being respectively £4,342,000 and £5,101,000, as against £2,516,000 and £4,708,000 in the corresponding week of 1938.
Apart from the satisfactory Treasury results thus shown, these figures of public finance, depending, as they do, on the general economic conditions of this country, reveal how active business is
in Great Britain. This is confirmed by the beer output, which is generally considered to be a reliable guide to British business conditions. This output shows considerable expansion, according to the latest statistics. In June this year the production of beer in Great Britain and Northern Ireland reached the highest
monthly total for many years, the number of standard barrels
released, cuty-paiċ, for consumption being 4.5 per cent above the
total for May, and 10.3 per cent above that for June, 1939.8