TNAG-0381-FCO40-427-Sterling-assets-and-balance-of-payments-of-Hong-Kong-1973 — Page 275

THE STAR

18973

Published daily except Sundays; midday and afternoon. English language edition circulation : 20,000. Chinese language edition circulation: 80,000.

12 4 SEP 1073

What The STAR thinks

Unsolved reserves

are hurting

STAR 18-943"

M

UBLIC criticism about corruption may soon be

Played by taking the anti-corruption unit away

from our police but where is our Government's "new initiative" to rescue our sterling reserves?. How strongly our community feels on this problem may perhaps be seen from yesterday's Chinese morning press. Most newspapers gave more prominence to our returning Governor's remarks on our currency problem with Britain than they did to the Governor's new anti-corruption initiative. ( true - e there wien no cantored konus

The reason is, of course, that many people in/

Hongkong believe Britain has for far too long been squeezing us for our surplus dollars to bolster their - own flagging economy rather than creating a nestegg for our own rainy day.

There is suspicion that some British investors raided our stock exchanges just before sterling "floated" to help themselves and triggered a stocks boom that has left a lot of people Hongkong a good deal poorer. ?ights Of course, the real facts are more complicated than tha But nonetheless many people have indeed been hurt on our stock exchanges and are still being hurt in the aftermath. Naturally we all wonder how much more we are going to be hurt by no solution - or an adverse solution - on our sterling reserves problem which we rightly feel is none of our own making.

Many, too, are impatient about accepting just a holding operation for six more months, not because they want to bankrupt Hongkong's own assets in sterling, but because another six months standstill inevitably will curb our own economy's initiatives.

Britain can remove our economic chains by ful

guaranteeing our money or letting us cut our losses and diversify our reserves out of sterling.

We feel we have done enough, if not too much already, to help sterling and our first obligation is to ourselves and not to Britain in any period of stultifying and damaging uncertainty that may lie ahead for sterling.

اذلي