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tee years or so did not include the cost of expanding the Polytechnic and Tochical Institutes does not necessarily mean that this will be throttled back. On the contrary the clear recognition in the Budget speech of the need for Hong Kong to upgrade industrial plant and equipment and improve its technological ability to keep with the changing world trade environment and the reference too to the need to make maximum use of increasingly stretched human resources must mean that increasing priority will be given to technical ed Luion at all levels from the secondary school up. This once more points to the need for us to make more than ordinary commercial sales effort to ensure that we are the prime supplier of machinery into these Technical Institutes. There is substantial money to be made with the immediate direct sales (even if these are done, as I would hope it, at "special favour" customer rate) there will be even more to be made in years to come from orders placed by people trained on our machinery. George Snell and his colleagues in ESD have already made sterling efforts to ensure that industry takes hold of this opportunity but industry can do more yet and on a coordinated basis if it really tried And I hope it will for the chance will not come again.
19. Machine Tools The same remarks apply to the machine tool industry. Cur efforts to try to get them to recognise the opportunities in this market over the next few years and to get in on the ground floor have so far met with virtually no success against a combination of their preference to deal with the existing proven markets and their belief that Hong Kong is not ready for any significant move forward from the old machines to the more modern. We can only hope that the recognition in the Budget of the need for updating and the financial incentives now given to it will persuade our machine tool manufacturers that the market is ripe and can be fmitful. But if they are going to take advantage of it they had better start soon because there can be no doubt that the Japanese and Germans and other manufacturers will quickly see and seize the opportunity.
20.
Vehicles The swingeing increase in the tax on cars above 1500 and the impositions heaped on the motorist are clear indications of the Government's intent to reduce if not the volume at least the size of the traffic in Hong Kong. There is no doubt from the initial reactions that the measures have severely shaken the motoring public and I believe that it is more than first shock reaction that people everywhere can be heard talking about switching to smaller cars. At present some 39% of the total imports of cars are 1500 cc and below - only a relatively small percentage of the remainder are big prestige cars and there is therefore a substantial middle ground from which people may be moving towards the smaller car. British manufacturers are well positioned to take advantage of this. At present we provide some 30% of all the cars of 1500 cc and below (last year we sold a total of just over 2,000). The Japanese provide about 45% and the remainded colle from Germany, France, Australia and Italy, none of whom are significant numbers. We offer a total of some 35 models in this engine capacity and the Japanese about the same number no one else comes anywhere near this. Hotor Show which concluded only a week ago (perhaps happily before the Budget) has been a timely demonstration to the public of the range of small cars that we have to offer and although it is difficult to say which ars were attracting the most serious interest there is no doubt that even then the public were showing lively interest in · and surprise at the range, quality and price of the small cars we had to offer. I hope therefore that the manufacturers will give urgent and serious attention to positioning this to be able to assist the local distributors in cet- ing what is likely to be a growing demand for cars in this category. It will of course be those who can respond quickest who will get the sales and it will be those who get the most cars on the road who will influence the trend in future buying. Unhappily BIMC have so far been very discouraging about the prospects for supplying Minis to ong Kong -Their rationing basis it qualifies for only a few ang iy
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The British
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