BASINGSTOKE Town chairman Rafi Razzak has revealed that the club is well on the way to wiping out its debts.

This time last year, the club owed more than £140,000 to various creditors and was in crisis, sparking the wage cuts that ultimately led to the departure of manager Francis Vines.

Since then, the board of directors have managed to reduce the debt to less than £45,000 and are paying off £5,000 every month, meaning that the club will be debt free in just nine months.

Razzak says that this has been possible because the club is working to a tighter budget and has new revenue through charging for the car park and by offering more services at the clubhouse.

The FA Cup run raised £12,000 and another £9,000 was raised through the club’s progress in the FA Trophy. Additional money was received in the summer, when Wycombe sold Sergio Torres to Peterborough, activating a sell-on clause agreed when Town sold him in 2005.

However, even with this additional revenue, the club remains reliant on Razzak.

“I pay the shortfall each month but there have been months when I haven’t had to put my hand in my pocket,” the chairman said. “It’s certainly better than last season, because I was putting my hand in my pocket every month.”

Razzak could have paid the debt off but thinks that the club will benefit from paying it off on a monthly basis.

“The key for us is to make sure the club is run as a business rather than building up more debt,” he said. “If I had just paid it off in one go, we might have ended up with further problems.

“It’s about teaching people how to handle money and even when compared to the interest we have paid, that has value for me because I want the club to be independent of me one day.”

The Town chairman is excited about the prospect of the club being debt free and even indicated that it could mean a loosening of the purse strings, player budget wise, next season.

“I am looking forward to the club being debt free because we will have up to £5,000 extra in the kitty every month,” Razzak said. “We could potentially raise the budget for next season, if we need to. However, with the credit crunch, it may be that our current budget appears more reasonable.”

However, while the club is well on the way to paying off outside bodies, Razzak himself is still owed a large amount of money. However, he insists that he is not looking for that back at the moment and says that the money he is putting into the club on a monthly is being converted into shares rather than adding to the debt.

“I am not going to ask for the money back,” he said. “I hope I will be repaid as part of the long-term vision of the club but I will certainly not be looking to recoup money once we have paid off these debts.”