(27
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
In Clewley (64)
STRA inside with
OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION Eland House Stag Place London SW1E 5TH
Telephone 01-834 2377 ext
p.p.
A F Toms Esq
CRE Department
Department of Trade and Industry
1 Victoria Street
London SW1
Your reference
Our reference
ACP 77/218/01
Date
21 Jay 1971
21/5
HONG KONG: EQUIPMENT FOR TECHNICAL INSTITUTES
1.
LAST
R5F.
29
20
NEXT
REF.
Please refer to your letter of 2 March to Laird in which you suggested that the idea of appealing to industry for support for the proposed technical institutes should quietly be dropped. I am afraid we find this difficult to endorse.
2.
We accept, of course, that there is no prospect of industry making a contribution of the order of £400,000 in present circumstances: that is why, in the end, aid funds were offered. But it remains our instruction from FCO Ministers that when the time is right we should pursue the hope that industry will make some contribution. This is what was said in paragraph 2 of FCO telegram No 147 and it accounts for the words "up to £100,000" and "within a total cost of "£400,000" used there.
3.
Our Assistant Adviser on Technical Education will be in Hong Kong next month and we shall ask him to discuss this project, so as to find out what equi ment will be needed, and when it will be needed. When we have this information we hope you will be able to consider, with us, the possibility of a contribution, in one form or another, by industry to complement the very substantial help they will be getting from the UK tax payer. At the least they might meet ag installation costs and/or, having been given an assured market, they might make the equi ment available on favourable terms.
4.
I am copying this letter to Laird in Hong Kong Department.
DE Glason
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY No.51 24 MAY 1971
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