TNAG-1159-FCO40-1439-Visit-by-Margaret-Thatcher--UK-Prime-Minister--to-Hong-Kong--1982 — Page 62

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DSR 11C

does have a crucial role to play, particularly in

encouraging schools and colleges to provide appropriate

facilities.

Small and new firms have a major part to play in

industrial and economic growth. Since we took

office in May 1979 we have tried to encourage

independent enterprise and create an environment

stimulating to the setting up or the expansion of small

firms. The measures which we have introduced vary

widely, but we have, for example, reduced or removed

legislative and administrative burdens which can

bear particularly heavily on the small firm with

limited or overstretched management resources. We

have stimulated the flow of investment funds to small

business by fiscal and other means.

To offer general encouragement to enterprise, we have

reduced the penal higher rates of taxation on income.

which our predecessors had introduced; we have removed

unnecessary and unfruitful restrictions like exchange

controls; we have striven, within the limits imposed by

wider economic policy considerations or external

constraints such as the pull from the high US interest

rates, to cheapen credit for industry and commerce.

Of course, we would like to see further falls in

interest rates. The framework for enterprise built by

my Government is also there to be used by the overseas

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