The Pan-Commonwealth Conference on Trade in Professional Services opened on 19 February 2008 in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, with a call for Commonwealth member countries to take advantage of opportunities presented by exporting skills and services.

In a speech at the opening ceremony at the JW Marriot Hotel, Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General Ransford Smith said that with the erosion of preferential trade regimes for most developing countries, “we must now even more urgently explore new and creative ways of realising the growth aspirations of our countries, and one of these avenues is the services sector.”
photo : © Julius Mucunguzi / Commonwealth Secretariat