that EPS may wish to make.
HONG KONG POLYTECHNIC
PC(75)54
3. Mr Burr explained that in 1972 the then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
concerned visited Hong Kong and promised a £500,000 grant, £400,000 of which was for
the Polytechnic. ODM and TETOC Education Adviser had since visited Hong Kong and
reported on the Polytechnic. They will be remaining in touch with the Polytechnic.
The Hong Kong Education Department were competent.
4. The Chairman said that as a Ministerial promise had been made it was the Committee's
task to see that it was implemented in as effective a way as possible.
5. The following main points were made in discussion:-
i. A new Director had been at the Polytechnic since last April and he had already
given it the direction and leadership that had been previously lacking..
ii. Normal supervision would not be appropriate as the Polytechnic had established
internal structures equal to those of the best British Polytechnics.
iii. Only British equipment would be provided.
RECOMMENDATION
6. It was agreed that the Committee wished to raise no further objection to the proposal
and that the Chairman should decide whether a submission to the Minister was required.
INFLATION AND THE COST OF PROJECTS
PC(75)55
7. The Chairman said that the paper covered three different aspects on inflation, viz,:
i. Procedures for identifying the difference between changes in monetary prices and
changes in real prices.
ii. The effect of changes in monetary prices on management of the aid programme.
iii. The effect of rapid changes in monetary prices on both the preparation of projects
(which had to be prepared over time) and on the on-going management of projects. Strictly speaking, only i. and the first part of iii. was properly the concern of the Projects Committee, but he proposed to let the discussion cover the whole subject. The paper pointed to some interesting conclusions which would affect procedures in the office. especially in geographical departments but it was important to make these procedures relatively straightforward lest they led to unacceptable delays in the submission of
projects.
8. Mr Wright said the paper had not been related to other work in the Ministry on
similar problems eg the Pearson Committee work on consultants.
9. The following main points arose in discussion:-
i. Inflation had created serious problems for the Aid Framework and was beginning to create problems for project management in that it was making it difficult to estimate costs and to determine the validity of claims for overruns. In particular it created
acute difficulties in forecasting disbursements on projects which took a long time to
/complete.