XN000022-1995-11-09 — Page 4

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Governor: I've always been convinced that the Government has an important role to play. Not only ensuring that we pursue sensible macro-economic policies in Hong Kong but that we also give Hong Kong the skills and educated work-force that it needs. It's worth remembering that the size of our labour force in Hong Kong, since 1979, has increased by a third, but at no time during that period has unemployment gone above five per cent. And so with a large increase in the number of people looking for jobs, we've on the whole managed to keep unemployment pretty low. In the last couple of years the number of people in the labour force has gone up by 180,000, after, in the previous five years, only going up by about 60,000. Now that's a huge increase and our problem in the last few months has been that though we've increased the number of jobs, the number of jobs hasn't increased by as much as the increase in the number of emigrants returning to Hong Kong or Chinese immigrants coming legally into Hong Kong and so on and we've got to do more to create jobs. OK? Thank you.

Question: (inaudible)

Governor: Sorry?

Question: (inaudible)

I

Governor: I would be crazy if I offered you predictions about either the employment rate or the inflation rate or any other economic statistics six months ago and you can go and ask stockbrokers the answer to that question and you may or may not believe them, but not everybody who believes them makes money. Thank you very much.

End/Thursday, November 9, 1995

Governor's opening address at Summit Meeting

Following is the opening address of the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, at the Governor's Summit Meeting on Employment today (Thursday):

Good afternoon, can I welcome you to the second meeting like this that we have had on employment. I know that I have got to take one or two lessons from the last meeting. First of all, there must be no discrimination on grounds of whether or not people are wearing ties. I notice that there are one or two people wearing ties today who were not wearing ties last time, but that wasn't really necessary. Secondly, I hope that we have not been cruel to the tortoise.