1
difference of 2% in these rates would be involved. Even if this wore the only contribution H.M.G. was able in present stringent circumstances to make, it would in all probability have to come from 0.D.M. funds.
The
At this point I think I must leave the attempt to persuade you to go against your own inclination and render such account as you can in monetary terms of what these improved services, as opposed to the lack of them, might mean to Hong Kong. I would expect you to have a canny regard to the Board of Trade's figures when at work on your own guesstimates. But may I also say that I have given you this departmental paper very much in confidence and off the record. Board provided us with this very liberal quantification of their interest with the caveat (which you may well enter with your cm figures) that it was consciously weighted in support of your applica- tion and would not withstand unfriendly examination. As a matter of fact I think their estimates owe a lot to BOAC who gre naturally keen supporters of your application.
8. Before I finish this letter, already too long, I have two other matters to raise in the general context of the Kai Tak loan. I will try to be brief.
9. The first concerns the possibility of your going on the London market for these funds, I have alluded to 70 as a purely notional coiling of the interest rates you might be prepared to pay, if indeed 14 caic to a loan of this cort. I know you have left this for negotiation but it would be helpful if you would tell me without prejudica whether you find this a reasonable figure. For that matter it would be interesting to know whether you still find the idea of a merket loan at all attractive, supposing it were possible and supposing aguin that you had to pay as much as 7%. You would be able to judge the size of II.K.G's contribution over a period of, say, ten years if they had to make up a difference of 24 on Cón. I do not imagine that you would find this a generous contribution to your project. But would you disregard any such offer altogether?
10. The second and last of these residual points relates to y Saving Despatch No.197 in which you make application for Colondu Development and Welfare Funds with which to expand the aeronautical tele-communications capability of the Airport. You may have been refcrring to this application in the first paragraph of your telegram No.227 in which you mentioned a possible contribution for air navigation aids.
I think if I were to send this despatch to 0.D.M., as I should already have done, that it could not fail to complicate the cutcome of the major application of which, to a layman, it already appears to constitute a part. For this reason I ask if you would be willing to defer this application for the time being ponding a decision on the question of the loan. We can put it in when that question has been decided, whatever the outcome.
(W. S. Carter)