HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL — 2nd October 1969. 59
agree that we are going to be abreast of this essential requirement on time. "On time" would, I suggest, be next year, or at the latest 1971; and yet the recent Engineering Report*, a first class document on which I would like to congratulate the Port Works Division of the Public Works Department, states that two berths, the minimum we shall need, will take a construction time of 3 years. Thus even if the formalities of tendering, gazetting and so on, are completed early next year, and the work is actually begun in 1970, we are not going to have adequate containership facilities until the second half of 1973. We, therefore, appear to be something like two years behind Singapore and Taiwan, and three years or more behind Japan and other major ports in the world. I am not, of course, forgetting the proposed interim scheme at Tsim Sha Tsui, and it is something that private enterprise, with the assistance from Government who are making land available, will be able to handle cargo for self-sustaining container ships in the near future. But this scheme is no long term solution, nor I believe are various other similar schemes which may presently be under con- sideration.
Something like 50% of Japan's Trans-Pacific cargo is already moving in containerships, and I understand some 20 containerships, all of which would require complete terminal facilities and shore cranes, are already on order or planned for the Far East-Europe trade. They will all have to bypass Hong Kong unless or until we can receive them, and thus from the fears I expressed earlier of the pressures from too high an export growth, I believe we are also in danger of losing business in the years to come. It is the buyer who calls the tune, and if a buyer in Boston, Birmingham, Bremen or Brisbane wants his goods in a container to take advantage of cheaper through transportation costs, to reduce pilferage or whatever his reason, that is what he will have to have. If he cannot get goods in containers from Hong Kong, he will order from where he can.
In this connexion, I realize that some of the delay in reaching decisions on our container facilities will be said to be because Ship- owners themselves were slow to announce their own plans of future containership operations. But which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Shipowners have been able for some time to plan their future Japan operations because they have known container terminals at the major ports will be there. The same can now be said to be true for Taiwan and Singapore. With container ships costing £3 million or more, and containers up to £1,000 apiece, Shipowners are not going to make huge investments and go into detailed operational planning to serve Hong Kong if they don't know the ships can be worked when they get here.
1969 Hansard, page 482.
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