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Hong Kong dearly missed opportunities in the years to come. In the meantime, the travelling public in whose interest this policy is being propagated, has difficulty not only getting seats to Beijing but to many other regional and international air destinations on the days they want to travel. Sir, I must of course declare an interest on this subject as Managing Director of Dragonair.
10 E was also going to mention in some detail the history
of increases in bank and deposit-taking company licence fees since the Banking (Amendment) Bill 1982, here readily declaring an interest as a director of the Hongkong and 14 Shanghai Banking Corporation, but Mr. David Li̟ has
already referred to them yesterday. Let me therefore just say that far from being a moderate royalty loading
per cent 17 measure as originally described, a 45% increase over six
licence fees for overseas branches of Hong years in
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Kong banks is more in the nature of penal taxation than 20 cost recovery, and I only hope that it does not reflect
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ber cent
>
the 45% increase in the cost of the Banking Commissioner's Office! The banks consider the level of these fees
totally disproportionate to the expense of supervising
their overseas branches. What bothers me most, however,
25 is that the Financial Secretary has not offered any 26 explanation or justification for his deviation from a
stated policy which the then Financial Secretary
reaffirmed in 1982 as "not raising taxation when the
Government clearly does not need money, either for its
immediate expenditure requirements or in order to N31 strengthen prudent reserves". A similarly unexplained
32 change to policy in this regard of the original
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33 legislative intent is present with the allocation of
HK$175 million to the Hong Kong Tourist Association, to 35 help it 'meet the shortfall between its expenditure and
Now the income for the Tourist Association for
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income'.
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