XN000022-1973-02-28 — Page 17

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Wednesday, February 28, 1973

Reviewing revenue and expenditure in 1972/73, the Financial Secretary

said that although the revenue estimate of $3,704 million took account of the

several tax concessions and the increased charges for off-street parking, he

had noted at the time that the expenditure estimate of $3,657 million excluded

known commitments to be met in that financial year.

These commitments, he said, amounted to some $176 million in respect

of pay adjustments for the civil service and subvented organisations and the

revised scheme of public assistance.

"Thus, theoretically, I was budgetting for a deficit of $129 million,

but I did not seriously consider this to be a likely outcome," he added.

Revenue

The revised estimate of revenue for the current year at $4,588 million,

he went on, represented a 30 per cent increase on actual revenue in 1971/72,

the highest rate of increase since 1949/50.

He gave a number of reasons for the increase.

Taking first recurrent revenue, of which the revised estimate at

$3,876 million was $456 million higher than the original estimate, he said that

most of this increase stemmed from higher revenue from stamp duty, earnings

and profits taxes, and from fees, receipts and reimbursements.

Revenue from stamp duty would exceed the original estimate by at least

$330 million, due largely to the persistently large volume of transactions on

the stock exchanges; that from earnings and profits taxes was expected to bring

in $38 million more than originally estimated; while the revised estimate for

fees, receipts and reimbursements would probably exceed the original estimate by

347 million, of which #22 million was due to greater activity in the Companies

Registry.

The Financial