BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) -- An international fair aiming at encouraging the opening up and cooperation of the service trade opened in Beijing Sunday.

The Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services, slated for May 28 to June 1, will focus on science and technology, Internet and communication, culture and education business and tourism, health and medication, and finance.

Themes at the fair include the opening up of the service industry, Belt and Road Initiative and coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

Launched in 2012, the fair has been held successfully four times. A total of 7,500 companies have joined the event, with 321.71 billion U.S. dollars of transactions.

On Sunday, 42 countries and regions held exhibitions or events, with 18 of the countries joining the fair for the first time.

At a keynote speech at the fair, Beijing deputy mayor Zhang Gong said the city's service trade volume reached 150 billion U. S. dollars in 2016.

The added value of Beijing's service sector was around 2 trillion yuan (292 billion U.S. dollars) last year. The sector accounted for 80.3 percent of the local GDP. About 12.3 billion U. S. dollars of foreign investment was used in the sector, according to Zhang. Enditem

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