MEETING OF LAND-LOCKED, TRANSIT DEVELOPING COUNTRIES TO BE HELD AT HEADQUARTERS, 18-20 JUNE
Press Release
TAD/1845
MEETING OF LAND-LOCKED, TRANSIT DEVELOPING COUNTRIES TO BE HELD AT HEADQUARTERS, 18-20 JUNE
19970617 NEW YORK, 17 June (UNCTAD) -- A meeting of land-locked and transit developing countries and their development partners will be held at Headquarters from 18 to 20 June. Organized pursuant to General Assembly resolution 50/97, it will be the third meeting, following meetings held in May 1993 and June 1995. The June 1995 resulted in adoption of the Global Framework for Transit Transport Cooperation between Land-locked and Transit Developing Countries and Donor Countries, which was endorsed by the General Assembly in December 1995.In its resolution 50/97, the Assembly asked the Secretary-General to convene a Third Meeting of Governmental Experts from Land-locked and Transit Developing Countries, Donor Countries and Representatives of Financial and Development Institutions, to review progress in the improvement of transit transport systems in line with the Global Framework for Transit Transport Cooperation and to agree on priorities for future action.
In preparation for the upcoming meetings, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has prepared an issues paper (document TD/B/LDC/AC.1/10), as well as a series of background documents which highlight specific progress at the regional, subregional and international level towards improvements of transit transport efficiency. Both the issues paper and the background documents contain recommendations for future action. A number of international institutions have also prepared background documents outlining their activities on behalf of the land-locked and transit developing countries.
A number of improvements have been made during recent years in various areas of transit transport. These include the liberalization of transit transport operations and services, greater participation of the private sector in some areas of transit transport, improved bilateral and subregional legal transit arrangements, the rehabilitation and improvement of transit transport infrastructure and removal of some of the non-physical barriers to transit traffic.
In spite of substantial improvement in transit transport arrangements, transit costs for land-locked developing countries remain far higher in most cases than those facing coastal countries, and higher still when compared with the similar costs facing developed countries. For example, global comparisons based on balance-of-payments data for 1994 show that the cost of freight alone
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increases the basic cost of imports for all industrial countries by an average of 3.2 per cent. However, they increase the cost for all developing countries by 5.7 per cent. The results within Africa are especially striking, with land-locked countries having a freight-to-import ratio of 17.4 per cent, as compared to 8.1 per cent for other developing countries in Africa.
At its fiftieth session in 1995, the General Assembly, as part of the preparations for the present meeting, called for subregional consultative meetings between land-locked and transit developing countries to agree on priority areas for future action. The first of such meetings, organized by UNCTAD and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), concerned the north-east Asian subregion and was held in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, on 22 May this year.
The outcome of the Ulan Bator meeting was a Memorandum of Understanding between China, Mongolia and the Russian Federation, which constituted a major breakthrough in cooperative arrangements between those countries. The Memorandum outlines proposals for a future programme of action to improve transit transport arrangements in the subregion. Other land-locked and transit countries will also have an opportunity to hold consultations among themselves during the course of the current meeting, to agree on priority areas for further action aimed at improving their present transit transport systems.
The 29 land-locked developing countries follow. In Africa: Botswana, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe. In Asia: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Nepal. In central Asia and Trans-Caucasia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. In Latin America: Bolivia, Paraguay.
The transit developing countries serving the land-locked countries follow. In Africa: Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, United Republic of Tanzania. In Asia, including Trans-Caucasia: China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Thailand, Viet Nam. In Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay.
In addition, two developed countries, South Africa and the Russian Federation, serve as transit neighbours to land-locked developing countries.
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