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Liss Lackey
Department of Trade & Industry
CRE 2
1 Victoria Street London SW1
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY No. 51
10 MAY 1974
HKK 57/20
.1
19 March 1974
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عمر باستال
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HONG KONG BUDGET
1974/1975
In my letter to you of 1 March I promised to send you reports of the debate in Legco on the Budget. I am afraid that when I wrote my previous letter I misremembered what the procedure is for the Budget debate here; They do not spread it over four weeks once a week but have two concentrated sessions a fortnight apart. The first was last week when two days were devoted to speeches by the unofficials after they had had a fortnight to consider the Budget proposals and prepared their line in discussions in their own caucus" (ULELCO). The next will be in another two weeks time when the official members will answer the points made in the Budget, and add their elaborations as necessary to the Budget, insofar as these affect their departments. Then Philip Haddon-Cave will wind up and in doing so will indicate the extent to which he is proposing to amend his Budget in response to the criticisms.
2. I thought that you might be interested to see, at this half way stage, what the comments - favourable and unfavour- able, from the unofficials have been. The easiest way to do this is to enclose the GIS summaries of the prepared statements by each unofficial member. They do not divert from these and there were no interventions or discussions.
3. I also enclose such editorial comment as there has been on the Budget.
4.
As you will see the two focal points of criticism have been first, and most strongly and consistently, failure fin the eyes of the critics) of the Budget to tackle the problem of inflation particularly the foodstuffs and basic commodities, and the second the proposed increase in vehicle tax and
/parking fees
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