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Wednesday, October 16, 1974
49
Summary of the approach to stock-taking and its outcome
Hon. Members will deduce from what I have said
about our major programmes what your Government's approach is
at this time. It is one of determination, but of prudent and
hard-headed determination, to press on towards the objectives
which Hon. Members have constantly supported. But to prepare
and plan the way to these objectives so that we may increase
or decrease the speed of our advance in accordance with the
rate at which our resources expand, and to do this smoothly in
accordance with predetermined interlocking priorities.
:
I
During this year much time and effort have been spent
on refining this discipline of stock-taking, and on defining
priorities across the whole field of capital expenditure.
beleive this to have been extremely beneficial, and that the
machinery established to do it - and of course to keep on doing
it because in the nature of things this is a continuing exercise
has made the Government more efficient, more flexible and more
finely tuned. Indeed it would be quite unrealistic without it
to embark on the sort of transformation of life in Hong Kong
which has now been charted in so many fields.
The aim to which we all subscribe of expanding and
providing services up to the realistic limit of our resources,
requires a much more precise idea of what the expenditure and
the services and the resources will be over a comparatively
long period of time, because the decisions of today are inevitably
locked into the decisions of tomorrow.
I
/However we