CO129-611-4 Development Committee- reports on various aspects 11-12-1945 - 14-7-1947 — Page 16

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that this is by any cons the case. The Doveloguent üceretariat in Hong Kong is not on all fours with Development Secretariats in other colonies, in the sense that it is concerned exclusively with development. You will see from the 1947/48 Estimetce that it comprises a Directorate, an Agricultural Department, a Fisheries Department, a Forestry Department and a Gardens Department (we are now as you know proposing to add a Co-operation Department). Before the war all these anall existing Departments, many of them virtually one-man Departmante, were responsible direct to the Colonial Secretariat, but the more convenient and efficient arrangement has now been adopted of bringing them all under the direction and supervision of one officer, the Secretary for Development. Clearly however, notwithstanding this re-organisation and the new nomenclature for the Department, each of its component sub-Departments is carrying on with its normal routine administrative work: there are no other Departonte outside the Development Secretariat concerned with the routine administrative work of Forestry, Agriculture, Fisheries, danions, etc., such as you find in a territory orgenised on a normal colonial lines. At e gnoss I should say that this Ordinary routine sdministrative work must account for a very large proportion of the work of the Development Secretariat: what the exact relative proportion ia sa between administration and development we could not of course say without consulting Hong Kong. ligsover, beyond drawing your attention to this matter in very general terms at this stage I do not wish to pursue the point for the moment, but it will obviously be an important factor which we shall have to take into account whon ve come to examine the extent to which it

may