TNAG-2356-FCO40-3427-Ministerial-visits-from-the-UK-to-Hong-Kong-1991 — Page 164

d

MAFF's visit to Egypt was likely to be cancelled due to lack of interest from industry.

e

Mr Watts commented that visits to India posed some problems from a Treasury/ECGD point of view. The Chairman explained that Mr Lilley's visit would be to the Indian Engineering Trade Fair, where the UK had taken the biggest pavilion as a partner nation. Industry had shown tremendous interest in this Fair.

f Mr Myers noted that visits attributed to Mr Rifkind were those planned for Mr Parkinson and were as a result to be marked 'Tentative'. Similar comments applied to visits shown for Mr Waldegrave.

g

Mr Gummer's visit to Romania should be described as tentative, the value of a visit would depend on the freeing up of the market there.

h

The Chairman commented that the Schedule contained five countries in which four or more visits were planned. These were the USA with ten visits, Japan seven visits, Canada four visits, Germany four visits and Hong Kong four visits. Two visits were planned to Australia, Egypt, Malaysia, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal and the USSR. The Chairman commented that the breakdown of visits was roughly in line with the priorities of the BOTB's Forward Plan.

i

The Committee noted that the Schedule need not contain non-trade promotion visits. The Chairman explained that the coordination of the Visits Programme by this Committee would highlight any possible cases in which too many visits were made for trade promotion purposes to the same market.

j

Mr Wood commented that Mr Heseltine's visit to the USSR related to the construction sector. Mr Wakeham's visit to the USSR should be recorded as tentative and would take place in either June or July 1991.

In conclusion the Committee noted that a revised schedule would be circulated that no longer needed to be copied to No.

10. The Committee considered the meeting useful, in particular Mr Wild considered that it helped ECGD to put its message across to Departments.

Department of Trade and Industry

OT3/1

January 1991

Min.vc