£5 Could Earn You
p. 11 · Read in the full issue
£1,250!
A New Kind of Government Loan for Fiji
IF the necessary Bill is not turned down by the next session of the Legislative Council (Oc tober 24). an investment of £5 in the new Fiji Premium Bonds Loan could return you the handsome sum of £1.250.
Or, on the other hand, it could earn you only 10/- in the next 10 years.
Officialdom says that this loan is in a “novel form for Fiji,” and please, not to call it a lottery—but it is enough to stir the interest of anyone with a teaspoon of sporting blood.
The loan is to raise £250,000 by the issue of 50,000 bonds of £5 each.
The total interest payable on this each year would amount to some thing like £7,000, but instead of paying each bondholder a few shill ings, a public drawing will be held annually of a hundred tickets bear ing the numbers of 100 bonds, and the whole of the interest will be divided amongst the holders of these bonds. The others will get nothing that year.
These 100 prize-winning bonds will then be regarded as redeemed and they will not take part in subsequent years’ drawings.
Any bonds which have not been drawn by February, 1962, will be redeemed in the following year for £5/10/- each—which will return their holders about 1 per cent, per annum.
The first drawing (if the loan is filled) will take place on February 15, 1953. The bond bearing the number of the first ticket drawn will be redeemed for £1,250; the second for £l,OOO, the third for £500; numbers four to six, for £250 each; the following ten for £lOO each; the following 20 at £5O each; and 64 will be redeemed at £2O each.
The excitement in Fiji as each February approaches should do something to dispel the humidity of the hot season. We hesitate to mention it in the same sentence as the various Caskets, Consultations and whatnot that keep the hopes of Australian citizens high, but it should prove a tonic to the small investor in Fiji. You can’t lose— and you could win substantially.
THE rest of the Colony’s loan programme is dull in comparison—the raising of £1,000,000 by the conventional-type bearer debentures of £lO, £l,OOO and £lO,OOO each, bearing interest of between three and four per cent. according to when they are re deemed.
Both loans will help finance de velopment work in the Colony.