Canberra, 15 September, 1950
Meeting for Inter-Departmental Committee on Technical Assistance Policy—South and South East Asia
With reference to the decisions made at the meeting of the above Committee on Wednesday last, 13th September,2 I now enclose a copy of 36 applications from the Government of Ceylon for Technical Assistance.3 Unfortunately it has not been practicable in the short time between the last and the next meeting to arrange the copying and distribution of the rather long, more general requests received from India, Pakistan and Ceylon. Arrangements have, however, been made to secure as quickly as possible from Colombo enough copies to distribute among the members of the Committee. The applications enclosed will, however, indicate the type of request which we are receiving and which we may expect to receive in large numbers in the future. Also enclosed is an outline of the ways in which Technical Assistance can be provided by Australia with an estimate of costs. It will be appreciated that this is tentative and it is submitted for the purpose of discussion only and follows the outline which was given at the last meeting.
It should be noted that as the Sub-Committee on Administration (comprising representatives of Public Service Board, Labour and National Service, Commonwealth Office of Education and External Affairs) is to hold a short meeting at 9.45 a.m. on Wednesday next, 20th September, the General Meeting of the Committee will now be held at 11 a.m. on this date, i.e. 20th September at the Department of External Affairs.4 It would be greatly appreciated if individual members of the Committee would carefully consider the matters raised at the last meeting, together with the requests and the outline enclosed, so that following the meeting on 20th September we shall be in a position to advise the Minister for External Affairs of the proposals regarding Australia’s contribution to the Technical Assistance Programme.
[NAA: A 1838, 708/9/5 part 2]
1 Addressed to Heads of Prime Minister’s Department, Treasury, Public Service Board, CSIRO, Commonwealth Office of Education, Commerce and Agriculture, Trade and Customs, Health, National Development, Labour and National Service and Immigration.
2 See Document 97.
3 Not published.
4 See Document 103.