Latest content: Economic development

Botswana to host continent-wide initiative to combat ‘graft’

Trade officials from 13 Commonwealth Pacific countries are meeting in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, for a week-long training course on negotiating investment and trade deals.

“This requires combined wisdom to explore ways of dealing with this challenge if efforts to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals are to bear fruit” – Cyrus Rustomjee

Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma yesterday hosted a reception at the Commonwealth headquarters, Marlborough House in London, to thank the outgoing Chair of the Council of Commonwealth Societies, Lord Watson of Richmond, and to welcome the Council’s incoming Chair, Lord Howell of Guildford.

The theme "encourages us all to celebrate the ways in which talent and innovation can be supported and put to the best use possible" - Secretary-General

Speaker: Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma

The Pacific island state to move from single commodity dependence to a diversified economy.

Speaker: Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba

Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba welcomed delegates to the three-day United Nations High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda on 31 October 2012.

“Landmark publication” gives insight to developing country investment negotiators

The Role of Public Administration in Economic Growth and Job Creation

Effective public administration vital for socio-economic development – Commonwealth Secretary-General at the Commonwealth Public Service Ministers Forum

A handbook to equip developing countries with options to negotiate and strike investment agreements that promote sustainable development, growth with jobs and improved livelihoods is to be launched on 29 October 2012.

The Fourth Commonwealth Public Service Ministers Forum which will take place in New Delhi, India, from 24-26 October 2012, is aimed at enhancing public policy to foster economic growth and employment.

Ugandan farmers have produced exceptional range of delicious foods - Project Director

Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General addresses Pan African Parliament on post-Millennium Development Goals framework

The Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting 2012 will take place in Tokyo, Japan, on 10 October.

Shock financing, youth unemployment, the successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals and private sector participation discussed at Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting

A new software to help countries plan, analyse and manage sovereign debt was launched on 10 October during the Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting in Tokyo, Japan.

Commonwealth Secretariat Director of Economic Affairs Dr Rustomjee

"Taxpayers want to see their taxes spent reasonably. All these make public procurement so important and therefore a subject of tight scrutiny because where large sums of money are involved, vulnerability to abuse increases" - Tanzania Deputy Minister of Finance

Nobel prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz has called for an enshrining of a ‘Right to Trade’ in the global trading regime, as a new initiative to help the trade performances of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable economies.

Professor Stiglitz participated in a Commonwealth roundtable on Aid for Trade on 29 August. Following the discussion he spoke to the Commonwealth about trade, the current global economic situation and the multilateral trading system

Dialogue and development key to deepening and broadening scope of collaboration.

A series of historic treaties to settle maritime boundaries in the Pacific were signed today at the 43rd Pacific Islands Forum in Rarotonga, Cook Islands.