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And,
issue may be, particularly as we do not have enough political clout to retaliate, or even to threaten retaliation. finally, the emphasis of overseas activities being representation with the aim of keeping open our access rights, I suggest that responsibility for supervising our overseas offices should clearly and firmly be vested in the Secretary for Trade and Industry, and not in the Secretary for Administrative Services and Information.
As regards the manufacturing sector, I think it would
be worthwhile for a review to be made of each major manufacturing industry to assess the size of their problems, to ascertain their export growth prospects and to determine the extent to which the Government may legitimately contribute towards improving the volume and quality of their output. This exercise should not require the revival of the Advisory Committee on Diversification, which took two years to complete
its task, and should be undertaken within the existing machinery of the Government in consultation with various industries. The findings should be fed into the Industrial
Development Board. I believe this exercise would be well worth our while: there is never any harm in taking stock, in the sense of re-examining the measures that the Government has introduced. Lest my intentions should be misunderstood, let me say categorically now that I am not seeking to upset or replace the Government's traditional role of positive
non-intervention. The question that I would like to see answered is, given a positively non-interventionist stance, whether the measures and services which Government has directly provided for example, in the supply of land and works, in promoting the investment of technology, and in the conduct of Hong Kong's external commercial relations have been effective, and whether the essential business services for which the Government is indirectly responsible for example, trade promotion, export credit insurance, the promotion of productivity are as effective as they should be, in the light of the changing economic and trading environment of the 1980s.
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