80,000 advanced by the company for the purchase of gold invest ments for the staff provident fund which took place some months ago, when the option was given to members of the sta€ to convert rheic ver holdings secured by municipal debentures into gold. Owing to the fall in local securities due to the political situation, your directors have not considered it advisable to sell the debentures released by the Conversion and are holding them in anticipation of recovery. In the meantime, the company is receiving fall interest on this investment, In this connection, you will notizo on the other side of- the balance sheet that a sum of Ts, 40000°is appropriated from the reserve fund, to which I will refer later, Mortgages are reduced by Tis, 70,000, "representing instalments received. Interest has been collected in full, and the.amount still outstanding should be further reduced during the coming year.
Investments show a slight me crease of Tls. 580, covering the acquisition of a few telephone shares, Cash in hand and at bankers stands at Tis, 12,683.16, which i a smaller figure than I had hoped for in view of trade results, This is dae partially to the large amount of work handled towards the close of the years calling for considerable expenditure, the accoits for which were still outstanding, and also to the call on our resources to meet the provident fund investments, Turning to the other side of the balance sheet, there is little which calls for comment, Reserve fund—Tis, 600,000:—You will notice that there is a reduction this year of Tis: 40,000 under this heading. This arises from amount of Tis, 28,000 which has been transferred, it is hoped only temporarily, to our staff provident fand to maintain the account in a solvent condition, 1 have referred to this subject when touching on the sundry debtors, and, should recovery take place in the value of local securities, which, in financial circles, is confidently expected, the amount will be recredited to' our reserve, The balance of Tis, 17,000, making up the total reduction, covers grants -made to our Into managing Director, Mr, Skinner, who retired fromthe company's service last year, and to his success sor Mr, Blechynden, who severed hhis connection with the company a recently as yesterday,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.