НКК 6/548/6
PA.
Thanr 20/2
16
Mr. T. J. O'Brien,
Finance Policy and Aid Dept.
Thank you for sending me a copy of Hannam's letter 6/6/2 dated 23 January about the Import Deposit Scheme. As you know, Hannam also sent me a copy of his previous letter on the same subject dated 21 January. But unless we have mislaid it, I have not seen your own letter.
2. I think I ought to sound a note of warning here: indeed it is much the same note as Hannam himself sounds in the final paragraph of his first letter. I am not sure where the Patterson to whom Hannam refers stands in this matter, but if (as I think is the case) he is a servant of the Hong Kong Government, then I imagine that there is a possibility that the Government Treasury will get to know of the enquiries you have been making. If this were to happen I would expect Sir J. Cowperthwaite to react quite vigorously to the idea that we were asking for this sort of information without going direct to his Department. Nor, in my view, should we be using the services of Hannam for this purpose. If the information is not available through normal banking channels, we might consider putting a direct request to Sir J. Cowperthwaite (although whether and how we do this must depend on our reason for wanting the information).
3.
We too are interested to know about the impact of the Import Deposit Scheme on Hong Kong, not so much specifically on Hong Kong's reserves as on her trade with the U.K. Not long after the introduction of the scheme, when we were sending copies of the Customs (Import Deposits) Act to the Colony, we asked them for an assessment in due course how these measures affected their trade.
12 February, 1969
(W. S. Carter) Hong Kong Department