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(3)
"Hong Kong's Textile Export Control System".
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(4)
"Conduct of and Propects for
Textile Trade from a Businessman's point of view".
By Mr. J.C.C. Chan, also of the
Hong Kong Government.
By Mr. Jack Tang, member of the Hong Kong Textiles. Advisory Board of the Hong Kong Government.
16. A statement by Mr. Zahurul Huq of the Government of Bangladesh on discussions and amendments relating to the MFA was also circulated at the Seminar.
17. As regards the objectives of the MFA, participants were generally agreed that as incorporated in the Preamble and in Article 1 of the Arrangement, they were basically sound. A principal aim in the implementation in the Arrangement as incorporated therein was to further the economic and social development of developing countries and secure a substantial increase in their export earnings from textile products, and to provide scope for a greater share for them in world trade in these products. Snags, however, developed in working towards these objectives. Very often it appeared that greater emphasis was laid by developed countries on the question of avoiding what they regarded as disruption in their own markets, and virtually nothing had been done by way of adjustment assistance in developed countries to get rid of inefficient sectors of industry and to move employment opportunities from those sectors to other lines of industry. In any attempt to seek changes either in the wording or in the spirit of implementation of the Arrangement, care had to be taken by developing countries to resist moves towards the weakening or dilution of the liberalising aspects and basic principles of the Arrangement.
18.
On the question of market disruption, the term had been carefully defined in Annex A, and concepts which were either extraneous or not contemplated in the Arrangement had been introduced by developed countries in the course of the Textile Committee discussions and elsewhere. Some developed country participants of the Arrangement had also raised questions about the need to provide opportunities for small exporters and newcomers, and this according to one or two participants, seemed to be an attempt to divide the ranks of the developing country members, a move which had to be resisted.
19. In this connection, the points raised by Mr. David Jordan in his inaugural address both about market disruption and 'globalization' of imports were endorsed by many representatives. In particular, the suggested move by the EEC for globalization of imports, that is to say, to allocate quotas agreed on under the Arrangement on a world wide. basis to be utilized presumably on a first-come-first served basis, and apparently even by developed countries (although this was by no means clear from the way the proposition was
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