1993-08-31 18:33
P.02
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The BTC local budget is in fact a joint management office budget and includes provision also for CTU staff. Local Budget Section RFD may wish to consider now whether it would be appropriate to include CTU costs in Peking's local budget from next year.
The CTU is part of the Embassy and operates solely in the eight southern provinces of China; it does not undertake export promotion work as such in Hong Kong. Oddly CTU travel costs in China are met from the Embassy's local. budget while all other CTU local expenses are debited to the BTC's local budget. By operating in this way we get a false (and low) reading of the cost of our export promotion work in China.
TMR
We have bid at Section 2a for an additional DS5 commercial officer (for projects work) and recorded the agreed upgrading of the SMO's post from DS6 to DS5 when Ruas Jarvis leaves at the end of his tour in August 1994. We have also tentatively included a bid for a DSS1 (PA to STC).
The case for the additional DS5 was first made by Peter Heap in his letter of 6 April 1992 to Andrew Burns, and has of course recently been repeated in exchanges between David Hall (PEP/DTI) and Christopher Hum. Separately, I have recently made the point in exchanges with David Hall that short term attachments, such as that of Richard Parry' s, represent better value for money but we fully understand the difficulties in continuing to operate on that basis. There is no question that there is scope for doing more on major project work and a dedicated DS5 would be fully occupied, splitting his time between Hong Kong and Southern China.
Peter Heap in the same letter mentioned that the case for a UK-based secretary for the STC strengthens as time passes, Mr Day made a similar point (in a manuscript letter of 28 May 1992
not copied to file - to Andrew Burns) and Christopher Hum suggested in his reply of 10 June 1992 that a formal bid be included in our next TMR. In fact that option was not taken up by Mr Day who instead decided to recruit a locally engaged Chinese speaking PA on contract terms (see BTC telno 245 of 7 August 1992). Francis Cornish may however wish to look afresh at the options. An experienced S1 would clearly be an asset to the Post; the MRS in their review envisaged appointing an S1 as PA to the Consul-General in 1997 so what we would be considering here is bringing that date forward.
At Section 2b of the questionnaire we have offered, as we did last year, to give up the DS6 information post if the redeployment of resources within AUS commands made a reduction necessary. It is however worth pointing out that Mr Osborne spends the bulk of his time on JLG and News Department work, and very little on the work of this office. But his post remains on the BTC's ADEST and could be offered as a saving from this Post.
MANAGEMENT IN CONFIDENCE
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