TNAG-0340-FCO40-376-Aid-to-Hong-Kong-from-UK-1972 — Page 85

Reference

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Mr Crowdon

AID FOR HONG KONG

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(20)

1. As you know I have been working on the Hong Kong Government's proposals for future aid as contained in Mr Haddon-Cave's letter of 17 August.

2. I have sent a minute to interested FCO Departments and am still waiting for some comments. However, this has thrown up various problems. Firstly, I have found out that we should have submitted bids for aid for the years 1974-77 before 11 September. A copy of this instruction went onto the Seychelles file and I did not see it. I have retrieved the situation in regard to the present aid proposals by sending a minute (copy attached) to Mr Windsor in ODA.

3. However, it has highlighted the complexity of the aid problem as far as Hong Kong is concerned. Firstly, we have no experience at all and it is generally agreed that personnel need to specialise on this subject if mistakes are not going to happen. I have sought advice from our Mr Edwards and we have been in touch with ODA. Mr Edwards says that our present files are wrong (we should have a separate one for each individual aid item) and that they are so complicated that he could not possibly find the time to unravel them. I do not know how either Mr Lambert or myself will be able to do this with no background knowledge.

4.

There is the further difficulty as ODA have all the past files and refuse to release them. This means for instance that although we know we have £400,000 allocated this year for aid to technical institutes we do not know whether anyone other than the former Governor, Sir David Trench, is aware of it, nor whether the Hong Kong Government have been asked to submit detailed proposals of how they are going to spend their allocation. Unless this money is spent before 31 March we would have lost it but, as you will see from the minute attached, I have asked for it to be carried over to next year.

5.

I think the answer might be for Mr Lambert to spend a short time in the ODA seeing what has happened there in the past so that he can concentrate on this question here. In any case I think it is impractical for me to do the detailed work involved since it would of necessity mean abandoning other important subjects.

26 September 1972

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and fellow;

M A Goodfellow

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