TNAG-0163-FCO40-199-Export-of-textiles-to-Norway-and-Sweden-1969 — Page 77

0003230

G.F. 323

CONFIDENTIAL

Third Session (Plenary)

10.40 a.

6th February 1969

Swedish Team

: Mr. Kristel Kumlin

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Mr. Lars-Eric Larson Ministry of Commerce

Mr. Henriksson

Royal Board of Trade

Hong Kong Team: Mr. D.H. Jordan

Mr. D.J.C. Jones

Commerce and Industry Department

Mr. E.P. Ho

Mr. L.M. Souza

Miss C. Welch

Board of Trade

23.

Mr. Kumlin announced that as Baron de Geer was ill with a high fever, he had temporarily assumed Chairmanship of the Swedish team. It was their intention to proceed as far as possible in the absence of their leader.

24.

After expressing his regrets at the Baron's indisposition and wishing him a speedy recovery, Mr. Jordan said it was necessary for him to revert to the statistics, especially as certain new figures were tabled the previous day and he had only been able to study them during the night. He then proceeded to deal with the three items under discussion.

841.462 Men's and boys' woollen knitwear

25.

Mr. Jordan said that the figures given by Mr. Strandberg included "nylon silk" roll-neck knitwear with the staple wool-type knitwear. These continuous synthetic fibre roll-neck garments were really a new kind of shirt. Given the discontinuous nature of woollen fibre, he would have preferred to have seen separate figures for woollen and wool-type discontinuous synthetic fibre knitwear. By his own re-calculation he could see that a good part of the decline in woollen knitwear production had gone into acrylic production, although a part had admittedly ceased production. Hong Kong's exports of this item to Sweden had tended to be seasonal and it appeared to him that most of the shipments for the winter and spring trade had already been despatched. On past performance, shipments would not start building up again until around May. Furthermore, unshipped valid E/As were minimal. If the Swedish Government still wished to press for restraint on this item, further details were needed of total imports broken down between main suppliers. If these figures indicated that the increase in total imports was greater than increase in imports from Hong Kong, it might establish that some other country was causing the damage to the Swedish industry.

/ex 841.751

CONFIDENTIAL