Mr Wilford
Sir Di Watson
PS Mr Royle
CONFIDENTIAL
50
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No MITI is
He
equivalent
EP DTI surely
HONG KONG MASS TRANSIT SYSTEM
1.
(45)
(4L)
Mr Haddon-Cave's reply (Hong Kong telegram No 247) to
the DTI's latest enquiry (FCO tel No 215) is disingenuous, (54)
given the Governor's comment in his letter of 16 February,
that "the British consortium will have to have produced its
last and best offer by April". I suspect that Mr Haddon-Cave
is trying to reconcile his own letter to the consortium and
his knowledge that they cannot in fact produce a firm price
by April with the decision by ExCo that they must have a price
as the basis for a decision on whether to go for a single
contract or a multi-contract solution.
2.
Nevertheless his response could, in practice, be useful
to the consortium. We can concentrate on producing a price,
with Mr Haddon-Cave's advance acknowledgement that we cannot
be held to it. In other words, Hong Kong have explicitly
permitted us to do what we feared the Japanese might do anyway
make an opening bid in the knowledge that once the competition
had been eliminated, the serious negotiations would have to
begin.
3. The other new development is that ECGD have been approached
by MITI, their Japanese equivalent, with a tentative offer to
split the project. When Mr Fell of ECGD was in Washington at
the end of February on other business, Mr Ozu of MITI told him
that:
He is both!
li.
CONFIDENTIAL
/ a.