PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
THETIC.O. 882
8 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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Briefly then what he said was this, that he did not consider that we should go to the money market in its present state for further loans, and a further objection was that the financial prospects of the Colony were not promising-they had slightly improved sugar had improved in price and I was able to say that things were looking up. Since then other circumstances have occurred which make it doubtful to me whether things are looking up quite to the extent that I think they were some weeks ago. The crop we have in front of us will not be so great as I antici- pated when the estimates were framed, and when we come to deal with the revenue we shall have to reduce very considerably the estimate given as the revenue from the present crop. But, at all events, the position that the Secretary of State requires, namely, that there should be an improvement in the financial position of the Colony before he sanctions fresh loans, has not arrived, and I do not think that any member of the Council can say that it has, in fact, it is the basis of the very able speech of the honourable member for Moka that our financial position is going from bad to
worse.
Mr. LECLÉZIO: I tried, on the contrary, to show that it had been improved. THE OFFICER ADMINISTERING THE GOVERNMENT: I am speaking rather of the financial position as shown by the estimates.
Mr. LECLÉZIO: You mean the expenditure.
THE OFFICER ADMINISTERING THE GOVERNMENT: I mean the expenditure is increasing from year to year and the revenue is being stretched unduly to meet a large expenditure. That is what I call a bad financial position, that is, when your expenditure is going beyond the limits of your revenue. We are spending more money than we can afford. Perhaps that puts the case more clearly.
Mr. NEWTON: It is a very serious criticism of the measures that were adopted last year, more serious than any of us has made.
THE OFFICER ADMINISTERING THE GOVERNMENT: I do not go into any kind of recrimination. It is no use at this time of day asking who is to blame because we have a large deficit, these questions of recrimination will not add a single rupee to the Treasury balance. Let us not enquire whether the disinfecting station was the voluntary act of the Government or whether it was forced on us by outside. pressure, whether the bacteriological institution, or the theatre grant, or any of those various items are or are not really matters of recrimination, the point I come to is that we are dealing with a position in which we are spending more money than we can afford and it is proposed to deal with that position by borrowing. In that way it is true we will get out of the difficulty, and we pass the difficulty on to our descendants; we do not provide them with the means of discharging the obligation we impose on them. The works are acknowledged not to be reproductive, at least not as yet, I do not say what the future may have in store for us, I do not say it may not happen that some of these lines by improved working, by some change in the population of the Colony; for instance, by people migrating from Port Louis to Long Mountain and providing passenger traffic on that line. I do not say that tney will not pay in the future, but at all events such things are not within sight. now, we are not within sight of a working profit on these various items of expen- diture which would acquit our conscience of putting the obligation on our descen- dants. Well, I do not think we ought to do that. Of course, as I said at the begin- ning, I hold, and I hold strongly, that there is no more invidious task, there is no more disagreeable task than imposing extra taxation on an impoverished com- munity. I say we are impoverished, I say it is a disagreeable task, but I say it wold be infinitely worse if we were to pass it on the shoulders of our impoverished descendants. Unpleasant as it may be, I say that we do better by facing our obli- gations, such as they are, by attacking our financial position, by considering how we can reorganise our position in such a way as to reduce our expenditure and reduce the burden upon the people rather than to pass those obligations on to posterity; I believe that this is in the true interest of Mauritius; I believe that it is to the credit of Mauritius and I believe it is in the interest of the people generally. However bad things may be, perhaps one of the best results of this unfortunate position of affairs will be that it will bring home, not only to the members of this Council but to every member of this community, the importance of economy. We must have this institution or that institution, this subsidy or that subsidy, all these
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things are pressed from time to time on the Government, and I hope that one of the effects of this crisis will be to bring that home to this community, and that the Government will not be again asked to incur expenditure which the people cannot afford to pay for.
Mr. L. E. ANTELME: Croyez-vous que, si nous demandions un emprunt_main- tenant, cela ne nous ferait pas du tort pour un autre emprunt que nous deman- derions à l'arrivée du nouveau gouverneur pour la centralisation des usines.
THE OFFICER ADMINISTERING THE GOVERNMENT: I can only give my personal opinion. It is this, as I have already explained. We have undertaken certain obligations, we have told the Secretary of State that we are going to do a certain thing in a certain way, we now say we cannot do that, we ask to raise the money by a loan. I may be wrong, but I cannot conceive that that is the proper way of acting. Supposing I was in London to-morrow and I was in the Colonial Office and I received such a request, I would say, these people must be in a shaky financial position when they tell us they cannot do what they promised to do.
Mr. NEWTON: Last year when it was decided to meet the expenditure in the way then adopted we thought even then that it was better to have recourse to a loan at once on account of the nature of the expenditure. But then there was a very good answer, there was money in the Treasury and of course the most natural way of going to work was to take that money to pay that expenditure. But since then we have found that those surplus balances have almost vanished and now is the time for considering whether we ought not to do what we ought to have done from the first. Last year it was more a question of expediency than of principle.
Mr. Duclos Je suis aussi d'avis que l'on doive réaliser des économies, parce que le chiffre des dépenses augmente d'année en année, et il suffit de se mettre en présence du chiffre énorme prévu au budget de cette année pour s'assurer que le pays a de jour en jour à supporter des charges plus considérables. En 1900, les revenus de la Colonie étaient de Rs. 7,904,608. Je prends cette somme d'un rapport présenté au Conseil par l'Auditeur-Général. Or, depuis 4 ans, nos dépenses ont augmenté de plus de 2 millions, et ce même pays qui, en 1900, ne pouvait donner que 8 millions de revenus se trouve obligé de fournir aujourd'hui au Gouvernement un revenu de 10 millions. Eh bien, la Colonie ne peut payer cette somme qu'à condition d'être taxée des plus sévèrement, et je crois, comme mon hon. ami le député de Moka, qu'elle ne peut pas être taxée davantage. Le déficit que vous prévoyez pour l'année prochaine est de Rs: 400,000. La question est de savoir si le pays doit produire cette somme par des taxes ou si nous devons avoir recours à un emprunt. Vous-même, vous êtes d'accord avec nous, pour dire que c'est une anomalie de pré- lever du revenu d'un pays une somme équivalente à pas moins de 50 pour cent. car c'est à peu près ce que vous allez prendre l'année prochaine.
Mr. L. E. ANTELME: C'est le plus fort argument que vous puissiez invoquer contre vous-même.
Mr. DuCLOS: Vous reconnaissez que ce chiffre est énorme, que nous sommes arrivés à la limite extrême, et cependant, vous demandez de nouvelles taxes pour combler un déficit qui n'est pas produit par des dépenses normales, mais par des sommes qui doivent être affectées aux nouveaux chemins de fer.
THE OFFICER ADMINISTERING THE GOVERNMENT: I said that we got 33 per cent. of the total revenue of the Colony. That is to say, taking the exports of the Colony at 30 millions of rupees, we took 10 millions. What I mean by the 50 per cent. is that 50 per cent. on the one-third goes to unproductive expenditure. Three millions go in personal emoluments, approximately Rs. 1,400,000 in payment of interest on the debt, that is unproductive, and approximately Rs. 600,000 goes to pensions. expenditure over which practically Government has no control. It represents one- half, that is 50 per cent. of the one-third.
Mr. DUCLOS: Quel que soit le montant, moi, je prétends qu'il est de 50 pour cent. Vous avez vous-même admis qu'il n'était pas sage de taxer davantage la population. parce que les impôts étaient déjà très élevés, et cependant, vous proposez qu'on les augmente! Ce n'est pas logique. Vous dites que les chemins de fer de Bois Chéri, dle la Montagne Longue et les tramways de la ville ne paieront pas. Or, ceci est contraire à ce que Sir Charles écrivait dans ses minutes relativement à ces chemins