Nothing Painful, Nothing Unhappy,

The Papua-New Guinea Budget

JUST "A LITTLE BIT OF FAIRYLAND "

From a Special Correspondent in Port Moresby

To anyone who had been present at finance sessions of governing Councils in other Pacific Islands Territories, the pre sentation of the Budget of Papua and New Guinea (which took place on September 16) seemed like a bit of fairyland.

NO painful explanations here of why expenditure outran esti mates. No unhappy seeking for more things to tax, so that vital services should not be cut. No frantic conning over of plans for capital construction, to see what could be done without.

No tears of any description.

The cost of running the Territory in 1958-59 will be £17,250,000. The Territory, by various taxes, will provide £5,250,000. Dear old Aus tralia, from motives of purest altruism, will provide the balance of £l2 millions, practically without strings.

Should Sing in His Bath The Treasurer, Mr. Harold Reeve, is a grim and unsmiling man.

Everyone, looking at him, expects him to produce at any moment a really ferocious example of an income tax. He never does . . .

No one ever has accused him of singing in his bath at night. But he should. There never was a country, in my long experience, where a Treasurer had more reason for lusty song.

Since the Administration took over from ANGAU, after the war, in 1945-46, it has spent in this Territory just under £100,000,000.

Of that, Australia provided, as a free gift, £67,040,623, or 69.3 per cent. Think of that! And yet Treasurer Reeve, presenting this really extraordinary Budget—a sort of Treasurer’s fairyland—looked as if the figures hurt him.

But No News Value This P-NG Budget of 1958-9 has little of news value. It is remark able only in its comparison with the Budgets of other and less fortunate Territories.

Of the planned expenditure, 23 per cent, is allotted to salaries, 22.4 per cent, to capital works and 39 per cent, to “contingencies” and “miscellaneous”. Which is about normal.

During the previous week, in Rabaul, spiteful wives were keeping their planter and trader husbands

awake at nights with dire fore bodings of an income tax, to be announced in this Budget. Two men I met in a bar in the Islands capital told me the scale of the coming tax, and how all public servants were to get higher salaries to take care of it.

"Cautious"

But there was not a hint of higher taxes. The wide-eyed innocence of Treasurer Reeve, flavoured with a proper amount of astonishment, when someone asked

him about the “proposed income tax”, remains one of my most precious memories of Port Moresby.

The year’s estimates have been carefully and cautiously made. The probable cessation of revenues which, for years, have come in from the millionaire companies’ search for oil has been taken into account.

Possible shrinkage in values of staple products, like copra, cocoa, rubber and shell, may mean less revenue from export duties, and these have been budgeted for.

“Export duty on coffee is not planned at this stage,” said the Treasurer, briefly.

Big Income from Duties Three-fifths of the Territory’s own revenues come from import and export duties. There are sub stantial earnings from Post Office and Forestry services.

One simple paragraph said that there might be £200,000 from “Capitation Tax” (that is, the head tax) in the current year. Maybe, it was wise to say so little about it.

High officialdom generally is exceedingly coy on that subject, at present.