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disbelief. But whatever they may think, the fact is that Britain enjoys no favours here over anyone else. We battle for our trade in the market place in competition with all others. We are on the same starting line as anyone else when tenders are called for and opened. We have no prior knowledge that others could not get and no special considerations that they do not have. Contracts are won and lost on merits and merits only, whether it be for supplying refuse bins or building a Mass-Transit Railway. That is how British contractors won the Cross Harbour Tunnel contract and Costains deservedly won much credit for the effective way that this contract was executed. But even that did not then guarantee them, or any other British suppliers, that they would get other contracts. You may recall that the much more valuable High Island Dem and Desalter contracts went elsewhere without regard to anything other than the strictly commercial consideration of
what looked like the best deal.
UK HONG KONG TRADE
Certainly Hong Kong's decision was not in this - or in any other matter influenced by such consider- ations as "where is our bread best buttered". Had it been (and I am not suggesting that it should have been) then Britain would surely have been a high qualifier. In 1972 we imported 50%, in value, more from Hong Kong than we sent to Hong, Kong (the figures were HK$2,195 million from Hong Kong and HK$1,437 million to Hong Kong). Put another way, we took 14.5% of your exports; you took 1.4% of ours. We were your second biggest market you were our twenty-third. Your total trade with us, imports and exports, was about 9% of your total world trade. Our trade with you was just over 1% of our total world trade. Your exports to the UK have grown by 300% in the past 10 years (it was 12% last year and is running at about that this year). Our exports to you have grown only 67% in the same period; last year they
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