Finance

The Finance Committee of the French Senate has turned a deficit to a surplus in the 1923 budget. Nevertheless, the Government will spend $443,583,000 more than it receives in the next fiscal year.

The Chamber of Deputies passed to the Senate an ordinary budget, calling for an expenditure of $1,460,214,000, with an estimated revenue from all sources of $1,214,955,000, leaving a deficit of $245,259,000. The Senate Committee applied a drastic economy axe to all departmental budgets achieving a cut of $113,400,000. Revenue estimates were raised by $170,100,000 by increased taxation returns, larger contributions from French colonies such as Indo-China and Madagascar, the attachment to the budget of $3,780,000 from the Saar basin coal- mines, and $31,500,000 from French railway companies for the sale of American railway army stock. Accordingly the ordinary budget will show a surplus of $38,241,000, and the French taxpayer receive value for his money.

The actual deficit will be caused by the Special Budget, composed of "recoverable expenditures," i. e., payment of pensions and interest or reparations loans, attributable to Germany under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. This Special Budget calls for $639,324,000 and as the French do not expect the Germans to pay any of this sum is will be a deadweight burden. The ordinary budget, however, places the sum of $157,500,000 at the disposal of the Special Budget. Thus, the deficit for reparations after subtracting the advance from the ordinary budget and the surplus on the ordinary budget, will leave the Government faced with a deficit of $443,583,000.

For reparation of the devastated areas, France paid, up to January 1, 1923, $5,985,000,000. Further work to be done will cost $3,150,000,000 more, making a total bad debt of $9,135,000,000. The only comfort for the French lies in the fact that the deficits thus incurred are represented by tangible property improvement and reconstruction, so that the country is richer by that much material gain, whether the franc depreciates further or not.

With regard to the Inter-Allied debts, France owes Government debts to the United States and Great Britain to the amount of 29,969,000,000 gold francs ($5,784,017,000).

France is owed, principally by partially insolvent or bankrupt countries (Russia, Belgium, Yugo-Slavia, Rumania, Greece, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Italy, Montenegro, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Austria), a total of 15,282,000,000 gold francs ($2,949,426,000). Hence the French feel justified in excluding their debts to England and America from consideration in their budgets, until the matters of Germany's reparations and the debts of other nations to France can likewise be considered.

Said Senator Henri Berenger, official reporter for the Senate Committee: " Our budget is in better shape than any other budget on Continental Europe! "