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discussions to accept a ban on

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Furthermore our ATP budget is currently under severe cher worked pressure and it would impossible to make any major new

and there:

commitments in the near future. The total worldwide budget, wo for the current year is £97 million, which will increase to let Japone... £112 million next year. The scale of the projects we are

talking about for the airport several hundreds of millions!

of pounds even when broken down into their smaller

components could not be accommodated, even though payment would be spread over a number of years.

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We do however need to watch what our partners,

particularly the Japanese, might do in this area. There have been indications that the Japanese could offer aid for this project and if the circumstances in Hong Kong, warranted it (perhaps if confidence had collapsed) or if it was squeezed

within the OECD rules, this might happen. It is just

conceivable that we might then have to consider providing ATP

for one or two of the smaller contracts, but this is a most

unlikely prospect.

concessiones assistance -DITC-

An area where we could be more exposed to criticism,

either by the public or by British companies, is our position on ECGD cover. Hong Kong is one of the "amber zone" markets

and, with the rules now agreed on how to deal with new

commitments in the amber zone, ECGD may provide cover for the

airport project only after seeking the agreement of EGC on

each and every contract over a certain size. Further, because

of the size of the contracts that British companies are

bidding for several hundreds of millions of pounds

could be problems with the size of ECGD's future global

business budget and Hong Kong's market limit. This issue has

already been flagged up in inter-departmental discussion.

there

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