TNAG-0340-FCO40-376-Aid-to-Hong-Kong-from-UK-1972 — Page 110

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GOVERNOR'S PROPOSALS FOR AID

1.

In his letter of 17 August, the Governor makes

two specific suggestions for aid to the Colony, namely :

(i) Aid amounting to HK$13,521,000 (c.£964,000) for the

Polytechnic Library, over the three years 1973/4 to 1975/6.

(ii) Aid amounting to $150/200,000 (c.£15,000) for a

digital radar simulator used for training air traffic controllers.

2. The second proposal is completely new. The Governor

givesreasons for rejecting former proposals for aid for the. airport, including the airport consultancy scheme and the instrument approach system which (particularly the former were strongly favoured by the DTI. (Please see Glaves-Smith's letters of 20 & 28 July 1972). I think we can now forget these. The Governor's new proposal is quite modest, and we should be able to squeeze it into the Aid Programme.

30

The first proposal being much larger raises certain problems. We can expert ODA opposition to a full bid of nearly £1 million. On the other hand, we already have ODA agreement to using part of the £400,000 for Technical Institutes for the Polytechnic Library.(Hiller-Fry's letter of 42 JaMarch). It seems to me that we have a choice of setting our sights high and putting in a bid for £1 million, with the chance that we loose the lot, or being satisfied with a mere £100,000 which we can regard as virtually 'in the bag', in which case we shall hardly please Hong Kong. In the circumstances I think we should aim high, as we can always fall back on the £100,000 as a last resort. (In fact there are still £300,000 of the original £400,000 løft, so we might be able to get ODA to agree to it all going to the Polytechnic, spaced out perhaps over three years this is would be far from satisfactory fall-back solution). 4. With regard to the timing ofour efforts to get these proposals included in the Aid Programme, FPAD have told me that it is now rather late to include anything in the August bids. However, the Treasury have said that they would be willing to re-allocate money from the years 1975/77 to 1973/4, in view of the tightness of the Aid Programme for that year. If this is finally agreed then there would be scope for feeding in our proposals

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