NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
Registry No.
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted. Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
...In Confidence
DRAFT BRIEF
To:-
Anglo-Japanese Ministerial
Type 1 +
From
Telephone No. & Ext.
Consultations (Anglo-Japanese
Economic Relations)
Department
HONG KONG AND THE JAPANESE GENERALISED PREFERENCE SCHEME
1.
HMG have been pressing the Japanese for nearly a
year to include Hong Kong (and other UK dependent ter-
ritories) in their Generalised Preference Scheme (GPS).
We believed, as a result of a statement in the Diet by
Mr Sato on 23 March to the effect that Hong Kong was
"not unsuitable" for inclusion in the Japanese GPS, that
we had overcome initial Japanese reluctance to accept beneficiary a territory they inevitably see as a as a competitor in other markets (notably in the US).
2.
However, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI),
who have been leading opposition to any worthwhile offer
to Hong Kong, have recently counter-proposed the exclu-
sion of all dependencies from the initial implementa-
tion of the Japanese GPS (possibly on 1 August 1972),
relegating them to a hypothetical second stage (before
April 1972) when their case would be "reviewed" along-
side other "problem" candidates for beneficiary status.
While donor countries generally may postpone the pos-
sible grant of preferences to the "problem" candidates
(mainly semi-developed Mediterranean countries such as
Spain, Greece and Israel, etc, as also Romania and
Bulgaria), only Japan among major donors has thought it
necessary to regard dependent territories as a "problem".
3. The Japanese Foreign Ministry have now told us,
without comment or explanation, that the MITI viewpoint
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