 I very much welcome the decision of the member states to hold this conference. I think it provides an opportunity for us to step back from our routine daily work in the committees and to consider an extremely important subject. I don't think there is any subject that is more important really in a relatively, let me say, risk free and open environment, risk free for discussion and open for discussion. Of course, the purpose is to investigate or to explore and to discuss and to consider the connections that exist between, on the one hand, the ubiquity of intellectual property in the current contemporary world economy and on the other hand the imperative of development. We're very pleased to be hosting this conference because actually the World Intellectual Property Organization has at its base a public-private partnership which is extremely interesting. Of course it's an inter-governmental organisation and it is composed of its member states. But nevertheless, if you look at the operations of the organisation, 97% as I think you are aware, 97% of the revenue of the organisation is derived from fees for services that are rendered by the organisation director of the private sector. And 21% of the expenditure of the organisation is on development and capacity building. So that is very interesting and I think unique partnership that we have at the basis of the organisation and a very precious one. The decision to hold this conference I think is an extremely timely one too if I may say because it's an opportunity to consider the very much changed environment in which intellectual property is operating at the moment. In the world and the accelerated pace of change for the, in respect of the circumstances of the context in which intellectual property is operating and allow me please just to allude to a couple of those elements of change that we see in the context for intellectual property. First of all the position of intellectual property in the economy, it is no longer on the periphery of the economic system, it's very much central to the economic system as we see now. We see on the one hand more and more governments around the world espousing innovation as a major element of their economic strategy, a major way of creating sustainable economies particularly in a time where commodity prices are suffering and have been considerably lowered around the world. And innovation value addition is increasingly the economic strategy that we see in all forms of economies, developing least developed transition economies around the world. And of course the role of intellectual property in relation to innovation is to protect the competitive advantage that is conferred by innovation. We see similar developments I think in respect of the cultural and creative industries. There was a recent study done by CISAC and Ernst and Young at the end of last year, December 2015, which valued the world market for cultural and creative works at 2.25 trillion United States dollars, so it's an extraordinarily large market as well. And which estimated that there are some 29.5 or 30 million jobs involved in the cultural and creative industries. And again when you look at those industries, copyright is a central mechanism for financing cultural production and for creating markets. For both innovation and creative works I think intellectual property does play the role of creating the possibility of market exchange and that it does so by actually making access a saleable commodity and since access is a saleable commodity this is the basis for the possibility of market exchange. On the other hand of course that role of access also raises questions about the possibility of access and the cost of access. And that raises in turn the pervasive question I think in the field of intellectual property of finding the right balance between on the one hand creating the appropriate incentives to enable market exchange, to enable investment, and on the other hand ensuring the social enjoyment of the benefit that is derived from innovation and from creative and cultural works. An army to mention three other changes besides the I think the centrality of intellectual property which has emerged in the course of the last 20 years. We also see it's a more multipolar world and I'll give you two statistics if I made in terms of international patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty here at WIPO. Asia now accounts for 40% of those applications which is an extraordinary change from a period just 20 years ago. And that compares to about 28% for Europe and about 27% for North America. A similar analysis can be done in terms of sales in the creative industries. We see again that Asia is the region in which the greatest number of sales occurs for creative works around about 34% of world sales. It's a world also in which I think we've seen great changes in the instruments of international cooperation and this is particularly irrelevant to development cooperation and the role of intellectual property in development. I welcome the public-private partnerships who are present and who will be represented amongst the speakers here. And we see that these are creating also instruments of balance in dealing with this fundamental and pervasive question of finding the appropriate balance across the world of intellectual property. And finally let me say that of course it's a globalised world and one of the best expressions of this I think recently and of the relevance of that to intellectual property was given in an article by Bryn Hoffson where he said that in a world of a globalised world of open markets and free trade labour and capital tend to drift to the location of higher value use and what becomes the scarce resource is ideas and innovation. So it's a very complex environment, a very fast changing environment and I think the subject that is being addressed by this conference is certainly an extremely important subject. I welcome your presence here and I welcome the discussions that will take place over the course of the next two days.