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DSR 11C
does have a crucial role to play, particularly in
encouraging schools and colleges to provide appropriate
facilities.
Small and new firms have a major part to play in
industrial and economic growth. Since we took
office in May 1979 we have tried to encourage
independent enterprise and create an environment
stimulating to the setting up or the expansion of small
firms. The measures which we have introduced vary
widely, but we have, for example, reduced or removed
legislative and administrative burdens which can
bear particularly heavily on the small firm with
limited or overstretched management resources. We
have stimulated the flow of investment funds to small
business by fiscal and other means.
To offer general encouragement to enterprise, we have
reduced the penal higher rates of taxation on income.
which our predecessors had introduced; we have removed
unnecessary and unfruitful restrictions like exchange
controls; we have striven, within the limits imposed by
wider economic policy considerations or external
constraints such as the pull from the high US interest
rates, to cheapen credit for industry and commerce.
Of course, we would like to see further falls in
interest rates. The framework for enterprise built by
my Government is also there to be used by the overseas
/company