Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
(9)
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Ра
London SW1 2AH
10 June 1991
HKB 182 13
PW Heap Esq CMG
British Trade Commission
HONG KONG
Dear Peter,
GORDON WU AND THE AIRPORT PROJECT
1.
กา
With your letter of 8 May you enclosed some papers given to you by Gordon Wu about the chronology of events from 1986 to 1989, during which Hopewell put forward their proposals for an airport project, and a record of a meeting at No 10 in July 1987.
2.
It is helpful to have these papers, but, in return, I enclose a copy of the brief prepared for my last round of talks in Peking by the Hong Kong Government. This deals with the selection of Chek Lap Kok as the site for the new airport and discusses the various private sector alternative proposals which have been put forward.
3. As you will see, the only comprehensive scheme that has been put forward is the one proposed by Gordon Wu in 1986/87. Contrary to some reports which have circulated, this scheme did not say that all the airport projects could be built with private money or without any burden on the taxpayer. The proposers claimed that the project would best be undertaken by a consortium of firms and entirely funded by the private sector, but with the full support of the Hong Kong Government and possible equity participation from the Government. In fact, the consortium proposed to recover its costs and to take its profits by:-
(a)
(b)
(c)
selling the replacement airport to the
Government, ie the Government would pay for all
the facilities;
granting a 30-year toll-income franchise on the roads, bridges and tunnels - you will notice this goes way beyond 1997;
Auctioning-off port berths by the Government, with the consortium taking a proportion of the proceeds; and
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/ (a)