TNAG-0563-FCO40-658-Construction-of-an-underground-railway-system-in-Hong-Kong-1975 — Page 250

0003160 G.F. 316

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(equivalent to about HK$5 million),

subject to certain conditions. The

Provisional Authority considers both

the amount and the conditions quite

unacceptable. The amount is quite

inadequate to meet the irrecoverable

expenditure the Provisional Authority

has incurred over the past twelve months.

4.

A spokesman for the

Provisional Authority said today that,

in retrospect, three important points

stand out in the negotiations with the

Japanese Consortium. First, the

Consortium's pre-emptive bid was

accepted for a variety of reasons, the

two most important of which were that it

offered a price within the Government's

ceiling price of $5,000 million without

subsequent cost escalation of any kind;

and that it also held out the possibility

of an early start and an early

completion of the project (assumed for

mid-1979). Neither of these advantages

has materialised through no fault of

the Hong Kong Government or the

Provisional Authority.

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