INDUSTRY AND TRADE
79
Exports to South Africa revived during the year, showing an increase of about fifty per cent over the 1959 total. A notable improvement was exhibited in knitted garments, towels, gunny bags, grey cotton sheeting, locks and padlocks, electrical apparatus and artificial flowers. South Africa changed the definition of origin for printed woven piecegoods; under this spinning, weaving and printing processes must now all be performed in one country if the article is to qualify as originating in that country. This definition supersedes the former requirement of seventy per cent single country content for cotton prints and seventy five per cent for rayon prints, and it should prove a welcome change to Hong Kong's textile industry. Dumping duties were imposed on slippers, industrial gloves and torch bulbs from Hong Kong and a protest against this was lodged through HM Government. A trade agree- ment signed between South Africa and the Central African Federa- tion is not expected to affect Hong Kong's trade with either party adversely.
The effect of new specific duties imposed by the Central African Federation in 1959 proved harmful to Hong Kong's exports. Garments and enamelware, two of the principal export lines, were particularly hard hit and it is difficult to see how the trade will revive without a more liberal import policy in the Federation. On the other hand Hong Kong is now a most important market for the Federation's tobacco exports.
A revision of Tanganyika's tariff structure to bring it into line with the highly protective tariffs, in force in Kenya and Uganda had reduced exports to Tanganyika of the goods affected to the same negligible level as to the other two territories. Enamelware has been particularly hard hit by this change, and it is noteworthy that Tanganyika, unlike the other two, has no enamelware industry of its own.
Government representatives attended meetings of the Common- wealth Economic Consultative Council in London during April and September, and a session of a GATT Working Party on disruptive competition, also in September. On these occasions they were attached to the United Kingdom delegation as advisers. Earlier in the year delegates also attended Intra-Regional Trade Promotion Talks and a meeting of the Committee on Trade of the