Registry
No.
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
DRAFT
letter
Type 1 +
From
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted. Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
..In Confidence
To:-
J. Cater, Esq.,
Director Commerce and
Industry Department, Fire Brigade Bull`ing, HONG KONG
Telephone No. & Ext.
Department
Exports of Hong Kong Cotton Textiles to the
United Kingdon in 1971
We are approaching the end of the period covered
by the 1966-70 Heads of Agreement and it therefore
becomes necessery to consider the arrangements which
until
will operate next year he the introduction of the
tariff on Commonwealth cotton textile imports on
1 January, 1972. You are, of course,fully aware of
i
the background to MMG's decision to abandon quantitative
'imports of restrictions on jcotton textiles from the end of 1971 and
to introduce instead a tariff,
2.
We wish to extend the present quota controls for
the period to the end of 1971, with an allowance to
the restricted suppliers, including Hong Kong, of a
further 1 growth. Under the Heads of Agreement a
footnote to Paragraph C states that if the growth of
United Kingdom domestic consumption of cotton textile
goods were to increase markedly in excess of the
W
expected rate, would undertake to consider the
possibility of allowing an increased growth to all
restricted suppliers. No growth in consumption bas in
fact taken place, not even the modert amount we expected
and which led us to offer the 1% annual growth on the
quotas. (infeat,
eat, În 1964 our apparent consumption of
woven cotton cloth and made-up amounted to 1856m sq. yds.;
by 1969 it had fallen to 1580m sq. yds, and in the first
half of 1970 to 739m sq.
5.19
(115281) Dd. 391599 1,500 2/60 Hw.
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