Reference.....HKK 21/12.
14.
Mr. Wide,
Fing
Financial Policy & Aid Dept.
Hong Kong's application for aid with the development of Kai Tak Airport has a long previous history with which you are probably broadly familiar. You will certainly know that a request for a loan of about £6 million for this purpose has been under protracted consideration.
2.
In February last Hong Kong superimposed on the loan request an application for a grant from C.D. & W. funds towards the expansion of the aeronautical communications capability at the Airport.
I say superimposed because the improvement of the ATC system was also part of the major loan request.
3. Because we thought that the C.D. & W. application would complicate, and perhaps prejudice, the major request we did not send it forward and told Hong Kong that we were hanging on to it for the time being. I mentioned this to Miss Durbin of your department.
40 However we think that the stage has now been reached where the C.D. & W. requests (there is now a second application which came in last month) must go to ODM. We have no hope that they will succeed: indeed if you look at (40) on HKK 21/11 and at (11) on this file you will see that we can be sure that they will fail. Nevertheless Mr. Carter, who has drafted the enclosed letter to ODM (and is now on leave), thinks that we must go through the motions.
5. I suppose that a C.D. & W. application should be sponsored by your department. Of course if you wish to take this one over we shall be happy, but because it is little more than a formality I imagine that you will be content that it should go from this department. In any event may we please have your comments on the draft.
6.
The matter is urgent in one sense: we can expect the MPs., who have taken an interest in the progress of this scheme in the past and have been fobbed off with a statement that it was under urgent official consideration, to enter the field again before so very long.
5 August, 1969
Muv
(H. H. Stewart) Hong Kong Department
Copy on HKK 21/11.
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