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New air services arrangements with Australia reached
The Government announced today (Thursday) that it had reached an agreement with the Australian Government over future air services arrangements.
The two sides had agreed on June 26 to renegotiate the existing arrangements in order to settle a dispute over the level of fifth freedom traffic carried by Qantas between Hong Kong and Singapore and Hong Kong and Bangkok.
A government spokesman said these negotiations had now concluded and a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) had been signed today by representatives of the two governments.
"From our perspective, the key element in the new package is the agreement to cap fifth freedom loads. This was the nub of the original dispute, and we are pleased that the issue has been settled once and for all," said the spokesman.
Due to commercial confidentiality, the exact terms of MOU would not be disclosed.
However, the spokesman said in addition to the understanding reached on fifth freedom traffic, the two sides had also agreed to review capacity arrangements for services between Hong Kong and Australia, the aim being to complete that exercise within six months.
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Statistics on insurance industry released
The Hong Kong insurance industry grew by 20 per cent last year, according to the provisional statistics for 1994 released today (Thursday) by the Commissioner of Insurance. Mr Ros Lam.
The total income of general and long term business amounted to $39.2 billion which represents about 3.8 per cent of the Hong Kong Gross Domestic Product.
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