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Committee is now available. The Financial Secretary's answer would presumably be that he has not yet had time to consider the report
and its implications.
5.
Taken together with the points in the original preview of the budget which caused us some concern (paragraph 12 of my previous submission), the information we have received provides food for further thought about the Hong Kong Government's budgetary policies. At the same time, it has been accepted that the Hong Kong budret would not be open to negotiation and there is, in any case, no time now for that since the Financial Secretary will be making his statement on Wednesday, 2 March. Instead, I suggest that we should consider the budget as a whole, once the Financial Secretary has made his statement and supporting documentation is available. Lord Goronwy-Roberts has already put the Governor on notice in his earlier message that there will be points which he will wish to pursue further, either by correspondence or during the Governor's next visit, which is due in the summer. The visit that Mr Murray and I will be making to Hong Kong at the end of March will also provide an opportunity to air our views about the budget.
6. I recommend that we should take note of Hong Kong telegrams 192 and 193 and carry out a further examination of the budget once it has been announced. The Economists and the Secretary of State's Special Economic Adviser have been consulted in the preparation of
this submission.
1 March 1977
cc:
Special Economic Adviser
to Secretary of State
Mr Smith (Economists Dept) Mr Maud (FRD)
Mr Hurst (OLA)
Mr Lipsey
3
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JA B Stewart
Hong Kong Department
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