101
No. 1930
7
Your Excellency,
HONG KONG.
REPORT OF CURRENCY COMMITTEE, 1930.
We, the Currency Committee appointed by Your Excellency's predecessor, the Hon. Mr. W. T. Southorn, C.M.G., Officer Administering the Government, have the honour to submit for Your Excellency's consideration the following report :-
INTRODUCTORY.
General.
1. We were appointed on the 28th of April, 1930, to make investigation with a view to supplying answers to the following questions, which represented our terms of reference :
(a) Is the present currency the most advantageous for the purposes of
the trade of this Colony?
(b) In what respects, if any, is the present currency situation in the
Colony unsatisfactory?
(c) If the situation is unsatisfactory in what way can it be remedied? (d) Is the premium on notes over silver detrimental to the prosperity of the Colony? If so can it be controlled and by what means? (e) Is the linking of the currency with silver advantageous to the
Colony? If so can it be more closely linked?
(f) Is it desirable in the interests of the Colony that the value of the dollar be stabilised? If so can any effective steps be taken to that end?
2. We issued in the newspapers a general invitation to the public to put for- ward their views and support them, if required, by oral evidence; we regret however to have to record our disappointment that this advertisement evoked only the most meagre response, and the opportunity thus offered was not availed of at all by ad- vocates of a stabilised currency. We also issued individual invitations to persons who, we considered, were specially qualified to shed light on various aspects of the subject, and who were representative of all interested sections of the community. We received the written views of many of the principal merchants and bankers' associations both Chinese and European in the Colony. We have also had before us the report of the Straits Currency Committee of 1903, of the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance of 1926, and of the recent Kemmerer Commission in China. In all we have heard ten representative witnesses orally and held nine meet- ings.
3. All written evidence we have received, and all memoranda previously writ- ten on the subject, to which we have had occasion to refer in this report, are printed as annexures in Part III. The minutes of those meetings at which oral evidence was heard form Part IV. To complete the data before us, and for ease of reference, we have appended in Part II all relevant Hong Kong ordinances and extracts from the supplemental Charters of the Chartered Bank, as well as a copy of the Order-in- Council by which the present currency system of the Colony is established.
Historical.
4. Whilst Hong Kong was still a settlement under Her Majesty's Plenipoten- tiary and Chief Superintendent of the Trade of British Subjects in China, a hetero- geneous collection of coins consisting of Spanish, Mexican and other dollars, East India Company's rupees and copper Chinese cash was proclaimed the circulating me- dium.
5. Shortly after the island was constituted a Colony, Mexican and other Re- publican dollars were on the 27th of April, 1842, proclaimed the standard currency of the Colony in all Government and Mercantile transactions.