CONFIDENTIAL
То
: Director of Commerce & Industry, Hong Kong
From Counsellor (Hong Kong Affairs), Geneva.
Memorandum No. 173
File No. GVA/10/8/1.
Date: 8 December, 1970.
O.E.C.D.
TRADE COMMITTEE
I attended the meeting of the OECD Trade Committee on 30 November/1 December. A copy of the agenda is enclosed. The first day was devoted entirely to Preferences, together with a working lunch attended by the heads of delegation of most donor countries.
2. The report in this memo is confined to discussion on aspects of preferences other than beneficiaries. My immed- iately following memo will deal with beneficiaries and the position of Hong Kong, and a further one will cover other questione dealt with by the Committee (i.e. items 4 onwards of the agenda).
3. The discussion on preferences centred round a consider- ation of the latest report of the Ad-hoc Group (TCE (70) 25) which had been prepared at a meeting of the Group held the previous week.
The report was introduced by the Chairman of the Group (Wintermans), who pointed out that the greater part of the Group's time had been spent in considering the GATT status of the GPS (Part II of the document). The Group had not consid- ered beneficiaries but they had recognised that this was the most important question still to be decided and that, until it was settled, other questions, including the legal status of the schemes in GATT, could not be properly finalised.
4. The Committee then went through the report section by section as follows:
(1) Further Changes in the Schemes
Cronk (U.S.) said that his delegation had notified the TSUS and BTN numbers of the chemical products which had been
He also drew attention to the list of U.S. dependent territories in TC.Pref.(70) 35 for which the U.S. was now formally claiming beneficiary status.
excluded from their scheme.
-1-
CONFIDENTIAL