ENG-1969 — Page 36

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HONG KONG MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN THE SIXTIES

these currencies. So far as new business was concerned there was little adverse effect on sales to Britain; in markets based on non- devalued currencies, the extent of the Hong Kong dollar's devalua- tion did not result generally in lower export prices in terms of these foreign currencies, but did, where necessary, give a small competitive advantage.

As the political climate improved in 1968, reinvestment and re-equipment began again and were reflected in the import figures of the second half of the year. Easier manufacturing and trading conditions clearly lay ahead. Industry therefore correctly took a relaxed view of the likely effect of the import levy imposed in Britain late in 1968. This levy did not have as adverse an effect on Hong Kong as had Britain's 15 per cent import surcharge of 1964, which damaged exports of manufactured products to Britain in the following year. With assistance from the banking system, the flow of exports to Britain in 1969 was maintained, although the rate of increase was below the average Hong Kong achieved to its other major markets.

INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

None of these events were sufficiently traumatic to have as lasting an impact on the development of manufacturing industry as other less tangible changes. Among these is the much deeper and wide- spread knowledge of the world and its markets acquired by manu- facturers during the decade. Many more of them have now the knowledge and financial status to determine whether to open their own export departments or continue to rely on specialist exporters or to work through both systems. This was not so in 1959, which partly explains why such official assistance to industry as there was in the fifties concentrated on the trading rather than production aspects of industrial development. The Commerce and Industry Department's principal effort was in those days and in the sixties directed to establishing or securing markets for industry in the developed west as an alternative to declining South-East Asian markets, through organising participation in trade fairs and trade missions. This culminated in the establishment during 1967 of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, an autonomous statutory body representative of industry, commerce, banking, etc, with an assured official income of sufficient magnitude to maintain an