XN000022-1981-12-04 — Page 21

PR 33

H |香港政府

GIS

新聞處

DAILY INFORMATION BULLETIN

SUPPLEMENT

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1981

SPEECH BY H.E. THE GOVERNOR ON THE OCCASION

OF THE ORIENT AND SOUTH-EAST ASIAN LIONS (OSEAL) FORUM AT THE QUEEN ELIZABETH STADIUM

Chairman, Mr Murakami, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Hong Kong is proud to play host for this year's Lions' International Forum and to help promulgate the ideal of service which

the Lions espouse.

You are all most welcome.

He

I take the opportunity to congratulate Mr Kay Murakani. is the first Lions Intemational President to come from Japan and indeed from the East Asian region. It is a great personal tribute to him and an indication of the respect in which Japan and this whole dynamic region is held by the rest of the world.

When I last addressed Lions International here in 1974 the shadow of the oil oriais, and what it might do to the major developed economies on which we are so dependent, lay heavily over this region.

In the I spoke of our fears and our hopes and our determination. event while there was hardship it was mercifully short lived, and we weathered that storm remarkably well. Since then the region as a whole has recorded extraordinary growth figures. While these have been the envy of the rest of the world, it is easy to forget they result from hard work, brave investment, and flexibility in facing new situations. We now face other perils in the form of increased protectionism from developed countries, induced by the pressures of unprecedented unemployment. The latter is a fact which we deplore and with which we sympathise, but its causes seldom have anything to do with imports from this region. The connection may be a deplorable political convenience, but it is certainly not a statistically verifiable fact. If such principles of short term political expediency

were once

Issued by Government Information Services, Beaconsfield House. Hong Kong. Tel: 5-233191