XN000022-1977-01-21 — Page 12

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It was my good fortune to come here after a decade of

prosperity in which so much had already been done by wise

predecessors and the public service, that it was possible to

draw up specific plans to eliminate the basic deficiencies that

remaized. The effort put into this planning process by the public

services was enormous, but it did show us very olearly where we

stood, what we had to do, and when and where and how we had to

do it; and it enabled the Financial Secretary to draw up both

short and long term budgetary forecasts to provide for the

implementation of the plans at a pace, and by stages, that would

be within our economic capability.

One should never become the slave of plans and of course

ours have had to be applied with flexibility as our financial

circumstances changed. But without them we would never have

maintained the progress that we did during the recession years,

and without then we would never have been able to compensate by

picking up their speed so quickly afterwards.

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As things now stand, provided our prosperity holds and

I will return to this - we should not be far from our original

targets though because of the recession there will have been more

progress at the end and less at the beginning of the time-span

than originally envisaged.

They are intended to produce a steady flow of improvements

that taken together will achieve significant physical, social and

demographic changes in Hong Kong by the early 1980s. Let me

explain what these plans mean in terms say of 1983, only six or

seven years ahead. I will start with Communications.

/By 1983

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