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B.-Stabilisation.
7. My second reservation concerns the question of the stabilisation of the dollar. While the other members of this Committee advise in paragraph 36 that "all available data should......be placed before expert opinion with a view to the formulating and having in readiness a feasible scheme......whereby the transfer of the Colony's currency from a silver to a gold basis may be effected sudden change-over be forced upon the Colony", I am of the opinion that expert advice should be sought as to whether this Colony can now, or at some future date, safely adopt the gold basis, even if China does not take the same course.
in case a
8. From paragraph 27 of my memorandum it will be seen that I, too, have reached the conclusion that the time is unpropitious for Hong Kong to change to a gold basis, but that I feel that if we were to do so even before China, the result might not be as harmful to the Colony as it is feared. I should like here to call attention to the arguments in favour of stabilisation which I have collected from various sources and arranged in paragraph 26 of my memorandum.
9. I have a great respect for the opinion of my colleagues on the Committee, appreciating their technical knowledge of the subject, and their ripe experience of business and banking conditions in Hong Kong and China. At the same time I feel that the Colony ought not to rely solely upon the opinion of this Committee in attempting to dispose of the problem which affects the very life blood of the Colony's trade. I hold the view that the question should be referred for advice to the highest possible experts whose disinterestedness and lack of bias cannot be questioned.
14th July, 1930.
R. H. KOTEWALL.