CO129-558-3 Levy on Salaries- petition from Chinese Civil Servants 3-1-1936 - 19-12-1936 — Page 221

11.

219

as 1926 at the figure of $3,486,290.54

less than at the end of October last.

nearly ten million dollars

The attached statement demonstrates clearly that any policy

of maintaining the surplus balances at a figure of approximately

$10,000,000 is but of recent adoption and that in the past Government

has not hesitated to draw on such balances in time of need.

When the Colony was faced by the emergency brought about by the strike and boycott in 1924-1926 liquid balances were considered as available to meet the deficit (Hansard 1926, p.61) and the balances

were in fact reduced from $15,971,495.23 at the end of 1923 to

$3,486,290.54 at the end of 1926.

It was recognized by Sir Edward Stubbs that it would not be

provident to allow the balances to be reduced much below $5,000,000 (Hansard, 1924 p. 93). but it was not, apparently, till 1932 that

any proposal for maintaining a balance of $10,000,000 was advocated by the Colonial Government and approved by Your predecessor as a measure of precaution for the time being in view of the uncertainty regarding the Colony's currency.

One assumes that the maintenance of the surplus was intended

therefore as a measure of precaution against just such a contingency as is alleged to threaten and the measure seems wholly to lose its value if recourse cannot now he had to the surplus.

In the course of the Budget debate on the 3rd. October, 1935, the Hon. Dr. Kotewall, C.M.G., advocated recourse to the surplus balances, and very cogently stated that "a reserve which is eternally inviolate is a useless excrescence." (Hansard, 1935, p. 190).

Touching the matter of such surplus balances Your Petitioners respectfully submit that the figures do not accurately show the

financial position as they do not take into account the values of the undermentioned properties recently purchased out of revenue, namely; -