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authorities in London will provide exchange for 11 legitimate
urposes and sterling transactions in Hong Kong itself are
completely unrestricted. .
The Secretary of State for the Colonies has also
agreed that it would be unwise to impose in Hong Kong a full
system of licensing of imports and exports. Search has
therefore been made for other means of checking undesirablo
imports, that is, imports which are undesirable because they
usc up oxchange resources. The conclusion has been reached
that this can best be done in two ways, first by the imposition
of taxation with the deliberate object of checking consumption.
with that end we propose to double the tax on petrol and foreign
wines and spirits and, since consumption of luxuries, even from
sterling sources, is to be discouraged, Government proposes to
increase the duties on Empire wines and spirits by 25%. In
considering the petrol taxation I hope that members will koog
prominently in mind that the authorities in the United Kingdom
have taken the very much more drastic step of direct rationing
of private users, granting them sufficient supplies for a
mileage of 2,000 miles à jour. The measures we propose are
very mild compared with that, just as in everything, elso,
taxation and control, the Hong Kong citizen is being treated
less severely than the United Kingdom resident. It is not
desired that the increased tax on petrol should hit the
commercial users, that is the buses and lorries; therefore the
tax on diesel oil used by the buses and some lorries will not
be increased and, as some offset to the additional burden on
petrol-driven lorries, the annual licence fee on such lorries
will be reduced to a nominal charge of 5 representing in each
casc a saving of from 85 to 115 per annum. Vehicles which
have already paid licence fees for this year will be eligible
for proportionate refund as from the 1st October.
No similar