Wednesday, October 16, 1974
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Taken together with the free or very heavily subsidised
Medical and Health Services and Education, our Social Welfare
Services are intended to ensure that the unfortunate in our
city are provided for until they can stand on their own feet)
· again. The Public Assistance Scheme is an essential part of
these services. For reasons which I will explain later I do
not anticipate any dramatic increase in the load that the
Scheme will have to carry. But anyone who takes a less optimistic
view of our prospects than I do can rest assured that this...
scheme is not sufficiently strong and well developed to be
capable of expansion and adaptation to meet any unforeseen
contingency.
Anglo-Chinese Relations
Before turning to the state of our economy, might I
say how satisfactory it is to see the steady improvement in
recent years of Sino-British relations. This has made possible
+he friendly co-operation about matters of mutual interest
which is so greatly to the benefit of Hong Kong......
THE ECONOMY
i
While these
And now I turn to our economic prospects.
are nothing like as bad as the prophets of doom would
have us believe we are obviously in a difficult period
and we cannot say with any accuracy precisely how long it.,
will last.
At the time I spoke to you last year the gross domestic product was increasing, in real terms, at an annual rate of some
7-8%, just a little above the growth rate which it is believed can be substained in the longer term. This was against the then background of international exchange rate variations, commodity
/shortages