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Council activities has had to be postponed until more money can be made available for the Council. There have been savings from a reduction in activity, in many cases enforced by circumstances, in India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Nigeria, Zanzibar, Cyprus and Hong Kong. The outcome has been a small reduction in overall Council recurrent expenditure.
The Future
8.
Ministers also reached agreement in October on the reductions to be made in the forecast of Overseas Information expenditure in the three years 1970/73. The cut in the forecast at 1968 prices of expenditure in 1970/71 is to be maintained at £lam., as for 1969/70, whereas in the following two years it is to be limited to £lm. But these cuts are to be increased by the full amount of any savings recommended by the Duncan Committee and also by the provision made in our forecast for the construction of a new medium wave transmitter on the English South Coast in the event of it being decided not to go ahead with this. (A decision has been postponed until we know the outcome of the next European Broadcasting Conference). The broad effect of Ministers' decision, bearing in mind our plans for necessary capital expenditure, is that recurrent expenditure will be maintained at approximately the same level in real terms (i.e. after risen costs have been taken into account) as in 1969/70 for the following three years subject to the Duncan Committee's recommendations and also, inevitably, to the possibility of further revision later this year and in subsequent years in the course of the annual public expenditure survey which has come to play so large a part in the Treasury's mechanism for containing public expenditure. In the mean- time we can only plan on the assumption that broadly the present level of activity will be maintained, while postponing decisions on new projects until the Duncan Committee has reported.
Yours ever,
Ds Cafe
(D.S. Cape)
Information Administration Department
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