TNAG-1107-FCO40-1358-Inspection-of-the-British-Trade-Commission--Hong-Kong--in-Fe-1981 — Page 22

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COMMERCIAL AND ECONOMIC WORK (Conta)

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of his time on commerce. He takes the lead on major projects end plays a part in the more important aspects of conventional commercial work. On the other hand, he leaves the day-to-day running of the commercial side to the DS6 First Secretary, Mr Morrison, who is the Trade Commissioner. The latter also plays the key role in receiving and dealing with missions. other UK officer on the trade side, the DS 7E Assistant Trade Commissioner, is Mr Orr. He covers a range of commodities, as do the LE Is. Recently he has found that an important propor- tion of his time has had to be devoted to market assessments/ surveys. In the last 3 months he has had to complete 16 of these. Many of them seem to arise from the desire of UK firms not to pay the £50 agency-finding fee without gaining some know- ledge of the market. We think it wrong that British firms should be encouraged to save money in this way with the result that extra work falls on the Trade Commission. We recommend that the Department in London might examine whether the guidance given to GESB and Regional Offices in paragraph 5 of OTM 14/77 does not encourage an increasing and disproportionate demand for short market surveys.

11. There are 2 Commercial LE Is. We examined the work of both, Nessrs Leung and Choy. We found it generally to be of a high standard, though we were unable to interview Mr Choy who was on a visit to the UK during our Inspecti on. We were however inclined to think that Mr Leung was somewhat under-employed. His list of commodities seems not over-demanding and the Trade Commission themselves told us that he seemed the most lightly burdened officer in the Section.

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Our only minor criticism relating to both LE Is concerned their habit of dictating all reports, including internal minutes, in draft. The draft was then corrected before appearing on the file. We pointed out to Mr Leung that this was time-consuming and ought to be unnecessary. He made the point that English was not his first language and he hesitated to attempt to dictate anything in final form. We urged him to be bold in this regard and to try to achieve a greater volume of output, on purely internal matters, in final form. We recommend that the Post keep an eye on this.

13. There are 3 LE III Commercial Assistants. Our predecessors found only 2; but moved one LE III (Mrs L Ng), a clerk who had been helping in Registry, to become a fully-fledged Commercial Assistant. The senior Commercial Assistant, Mr Tsee, hoped for promotion. We found his work anyway not to be outstanding and told him that there was no question of a Commercial Assistant in Hong Kong gaining promotion to LE II. We found the Commercial Assistants making something of a labour of the not

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