PCS 285/393/2
3 March 1995
Ambrose Wong Esq
BY FAX
215/001
Student Financial Assistance Agency
Hong Kong
Fax no: 2519 3846 (7/F)
Dea
in Wong
UK/HK GOVERNMENTS JOINT FUNDING SCHEME 1994-95
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
Telephone: 0171
pla
Schlerhp's
1713195
1. Thank you for your letter of 3 March to my colleague, Mrs Lauren Johnstone. We note that you are submitting the supporting documentation and the original invoicing separately by speed-post. As you will appreciate because of the end of our financial year on 31 March we do need to settle up these invoices very urgently and within the next few days.
You will recall that we advised you in Mr Gracey's letter of 30 December 1993 (copy attached) that the provision we had committed for Year 1 (1994/95) of the run-down of the Joint Funding Scheme was £1.6 million. This was based on the projections in the enclosure (copy attached) to the letter of 16 July 1993 from the HK Secretary for Education and Manpower to Mr Peter Ricketts in the HK Department of the FCO. As you will realise now to receive an invoice showing expenditure of only £878,000 is very unwelcome news. This leaves us with an underspend of over £700,000 remaining which at this late point in the financial year we cannot effectively redeploy elsewhere. should be grateful if you could let me have urgently (if possible by return) an explanation of why the programme is so heavily under utilised. Are you sure there are no further invoices tó come in?
3.
I
Our provision for the programme for the next financial year, 1995/96, is £900,000. In the light of what appears to have happened in the current year we shall also need your urgent guidance on whether this provision is now too generous and if so what figure we should make available.
4.
I am sending a copy of this letter to Mr James Smith-Laittan at the British Trade Commission in Hong Kong for any comments which he might also wish to make on the current situation. Yours Swin consig
Long
Mich owed
Michael J Long
Head of Overseas Students Policy Section Cultural Relations Department
c୯; Mr P Ford, Hong Kong Department, FCO
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