ENG-1977 — Page 209

13

Communications and Transport

กา

HONG KONG's position as a major centre of industry, trade and finance owes a great deal to its highly-efficient communications and transport system.

Public transport is constantly being improved, along with facilities catering for international shipping, air travel and general transport. In the telecommunications field, the territory has long made use of satellite earth stations, computers and other highly-complex electronic equipment.

Postal Services

With the opening of a new post office at Tsing Yi in September, there are now 73 post offices in the territory, including one mobile facility that serves the remote parts of the New Territories.

Further progress was made on the $43 million International Mail Centre with the signing, in October, of the contract for the construction of the building. The centre, due to be completed in 1979, will be the major mail processing unit in the territory and will handle all international mail.

In most areas of Hong Kong, there are two mail deliveries a day from Monday to Saturday. The Post Office aims to deliver mail not later than one working day after the date of posting, and it is largely successful in meeting this target.

The volume of mail in general continued to increase during the year. An estimated 305 million letters, registered articles and parcels were handled - 5.6 per cent more than in 1976. Apart from a 5.8 per cent increase in mail posted for local delivery, the weight of air-mail parcels to overseas destinations increased by 26 per cent and other categories of air-mail by 9.2 per cent. The number of parcels posted to other countries by surface mail increased by one per cent, thus reversing a trend that had been evident since 1974.

On average, about 8.8 tonnes of air-mail were despatched daily throughout 1977. Most surface mail despatched to other countries is containerised and an average of two full container loads were made up each day of the year.

There was a further growth in the use of the Speedpost service, which is available to Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Britain, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States. The number of items handled increased to 45,000, compared with 28,000 in the previous year. Express mail traffic also continued to increase, with some 732,000 items being despatched 18.8 per cent more than in 1976.

―

There were four issues of commemorative postage stamps in 1977. Two stamps were issued in January to mark the Lunar New Year - the Year of the Snake. This was the