0003230
G.F. 323
CONFIDENTIAL
Enclosure 1
Opening Statement by the Hon. T.D. Sorby
the Director of Commerce and Industry
In 1962, I attended the session of the GATT whose last day
witnessed the explosion which eventually led to the creation of the
UNCTAD. During the session, the Norwegian delegation sought me out
to say that Norway wanted discussion on the level of certain textile
imports from Hong Kong. In due course we concluded Hong Kong's first
international bilateral trade agreement.
It is now my great pleasure to welcome you to Hong Kong
for the third stage of what has turned out to be fairly protracted
discussions which started in Oslo and then moved to London.
We are always pleased to hold such consultations in Hong
even though by so doing we forego the
Kong rather than elsewhere
gere rous hospitality of our partners. And I should add that both
Mr. Jordan and Mr. Yau much appreciated the hospitality of the
Norwegian Government earlier this year.
One reason why we prefer consultations on home ground is
that it gives us an opportunity to show our trading partners something
of Hong Kong itself. When you consider that the maintenance and
development of everything you see here is dependent on our export
trade when one remombers also that textiles provide 50% of our export
earnings and that the possibilities for us to move into other
industrial sectors are severely hampered by simple geography as much
as anything else, when you consider all these facts I am sure you
reluctance to impose restrictions on those exports.
For an economy to depend on exports of a limited number of commodities
is not unique. But I imagine that there are few economies that are
as dependent on exports of a limited range of manufactures for survival
as we are: or so unfortunate as to be so dependent on exports of such
a "sensitive" item as textiles. Still we recognise that others have
problems, and some worse off than we.
will unde_stand
/In
CONFIDENTIAL
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