CO129-597-1 Estimates 1948 15-11-1946 - 12-6-1948 — Page 82

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incurred during 1946/47, considerable difficulty was

experienced in limiting the 1947/48 rehabilitation

expenditure to a figure that kept it within the total

(25) of one hundred million authorized in your telegram No. 1079 54126/4/46

of the 16th October, 1946 for the total of the proposed

new loan. It is clear that further heavy expenditure

chiefly on buildings, port works, waterworks and railways

will be necessary before the public services of the

Colony are finally restored to anything approaching their

pre-war standard of efficiency. This additional

expenditure has been roughly estimated at rather over

one hundred million but this figure may be capable of

some reduction, say, to seventy-five million, for after

March, 1948 any remaining repairs and the renovation of

buildings which owing to lack of material were not

properly repaired in the early stages of the re-occupation,

will more properly fall to be dealt with as ordinary

maintenance.

31.

Besides this there are a number of indeterminate

liabilities relating to the war years such as the

incidence of Volunteer pensions and demobilization

benefits, repatriation passages and relief payments.

The total sum involved is not known but it must be very

large. Then there is the problem of providing adequate

water supplies for the increasing population. The

completion of the Tai Lam Chung scheme is even more

necessary than it was before the war and the expenditure

envisaged is of the order of sixty-four million spread

over a period of eleven years. This is not all. If the

Colony is to retain its importance as one of the principal

air junctions of the Far East, the provision of a new

St