The officials in the Department of Commerce and its Commercial representatives based in Sri Lanka Diplomatic Missions abroad actively take part in facilitating, strengthening and establishing Sri Lanka’s Commercial and Investment interests in foreign markets. Trade representatives abroad assist Sri Lankan enterprises to develop their business capabilities and find correct overseas partners. Trade Representatives are involved in

• Providing assistance to the SME sector in finding buyers in the global market environment.
• Matching service, which connects the Sri Lankan business community to overseas business contacts.
• Providing of business and market intelligence for specific markets and products.
• Providing market intelligence, up-to-date analysis on worldwide market trends, directions and business strategies, assessing and forecasting political, economic and business conditions in major economies with which Sri Lanka maintains a closer economic relation.
• Counselling and consultations for Sri Lankan companies with an aim of providing them insight into how overseas private sector companies will respond and react to different market situations.
• Providing adequate exposure and publicity to Sri Lanka’s unique advantages of strategic location, competitive and intelligent workforce, pro-business environment which make it is the ideal launching pad for penetrating to the massive regional and global markets
• Assisting Sri Lankan enterprises to stay very relevant to the needs of the international market and support them in taking right decisions in establishing right connections.
• Organizing business networking, business matchmaking and interactive dialogs for the Sri Lankan business community with their international counterparts during various business visits undertaken by them.
• Engaging in and interacting closely with Sri Lankan business community on regular basis to understand their business needs better and continuously update them on overseas opportunities.
• Assisting the business community to understand indirect trade restrictive measures such as TBT and SPS measures, by various economies, which may disturb future focus and directions of the enterprises and ensuring that effects of these measures are mitigated with possible counter measures by Sri Lanka.
• Assisting government agencies as well as private sector enterprises to understand multilateral trading system under the auspices of WTO and its impact on future of the global trade.
• Identifying trade-facilitating measures such as Preferential Tariffs, Free Trade Agreements and advice the concerned agencies how best Sri Lanka could reap benefits out of them.
• Providing adequate exposure and publicity for wide range of benefits that could be accrued through several regional and bilateral trading arrangements for which Sri Lanka is signatory.
• Ensuring that there is a proper network of contacts with every concerned party that include senior level government officials and business leaders including trade chambers to promote and protect Sri Lanka's interest overseas.
• Communicating intelligence with relevant agencies including DOC in time to avoid or minimize possible damages to the future economic activities.