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COMMERCIAL AND ECONOMIC WORK (Conta)
expand on what they have said. It is sufficient for us to recommend that the Department should bear in mind our agreement with the Post's point of view already set out. Specifically, we believe that Departments in London should, guided by the Post, be in a position to exercise greater selectivity both over the type of mission and individual members of missions. The Post's attempts to weed out unsatisfactory members of previous missions have so far fallen on stony ground. The Post estimate that missions coming to Hong Kong at the current rate of subsidy now cost HMG around £100,000 a year.
INVISIBLES
7. This is another important area. Though there are no statis- tics, there can be little doubt that British invisible exports to Hong Kong are on
on a massive scale, amounting to some hundreds of millions of pounds and probably redressing the trade balance which, at the moment, is in Hong Kong's favour (1977 British visible exports to Hong Kong £271 million, Hong Kong to Britain £454 million). These exports lie to a considerable extent in the financial field; but civil aviation must also play a con- siderable part. Nor should the presence of a large number of British consultants in various areas of Hong Kong be forgotten.
OTHER WORK BY THE TRADE COMMISSION
8.
Despite the importance of the 3 major areas so far singled out, the Commission carry out a wide range of conventional trade promotion work. Recent statistics show that in 1977 there were 4.31 local visitors received by commercial officers; a further 1265 by Commercial Assistants. In 1975 there were 524 British business visitors to the Trade Commission. The figures for 1976 and 1977 are 467 and 529 respectively. There was a massive British industrial exhibition at the beginning of 1978. Specific export opportunities amounted to 70 in 1975, 61 in 1976 and 109 in 1977. The number of papers filed by Registry went up from over 12,000 in 1975 to nearly 20,000 in 1977; but the figure for 1976 was larger at 22,000.
9.
Our conclusion from all this and from our examination of the papers is that the conventional work done by the Trade Commission has held fairly steady over the last few years; project work, however, has considerably increased.
WORK BY INDIVIDUAL OFFICERS
10.
The Sentor Trade Commissioner (STC), Mr March, is in charge of the mission as a whole; but he spends by far the greater part
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