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In the past years, study visits have been organised to countries with advanced agricultural technology and systems, including Japan, Australia, the United States, Britain, France, Holland, Belgium and Israel etc.
Areas to be studied in the forthcoming visit include: vegetable growing techniques and variety selection, post-harvest processing and packaging of vegetables, production and quality control of seeds, control of pests and weeds, as well as facilities and operation of vegetable wholesale markets.
Dr Lee thanked the Australian and New Zealand trade commissions in Hong Kong for assisting in the organisation of the study visit.
Led by the Federation's Chairman Mr Yung Tin-tack and accompanied by AFD's Senior Agricultural Development Officer Mr Chan Chi-chiu, the delegation comprises of three other Marketing Advisory Board members, a VMO manager and 23 local farmers.
The group will visit horticultural and research centres, universities, agricultural product wholesale markets, production areas, and farmers' organisations in cities such as Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington.
The delegation is expected to return to Hong Kong on May 27.
End/Thursday, May 11, 1995
Reduction of paging licence fee
With a resolution under the Trading Fund Ordinance passed by the Legislative Council yesterday (Wednesday), the Office of the Telecommunications Authority Trading Fund will be established with effect from June 1, 1995.
In order to rebalance income from different categories of telecommunications fees and charges, the Director-General of Telecommunications has announced that paging operators, with effect from June 1, 1995, will be invited to convert their current radio paging system licence into public radiocommunications service licences.
The licence fee for each radio pager under the public radiocommunications service licence will be $75, whereas that for a radio paging system licence is $80.