Trade officials from 31 countries meet in Asunción, Paraguay, 9-10 AUGUST

Landlocked Countries Open New Front in Doha Trade Talks

NEW YORK, 8 August (UN Department of Public Information) -- The countries with the greatest obstacles to overcome in participating in world trade will meet tomorrow in the central South American highlands, with hopes of a better deal on reaching faraway markets.

Trade ministers and representatives from 31 developing landlocked nations -- located in Asia and Africa, as well as South America -- will seek to hammer out a common platform on trade talks leading up to the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting this December, in Hong Kong, China.

Organized by the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS), and hosted by the Government of Paraguay, the meeting will deal with issues such as guarantee of access to seaports for landlocked nations, market measures to offset geographic handicaps and facilitation of regulations and fees charged by neighbouring transit access countries, i.e. those that stand between the landlocked nations and the seas.

Such issues were covered in principle at the landmark United Nations conference on transit transport cooperation, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2003.  But inclusion in WTO agreements would be a decisive step in operationalizing these principles, conference organizers say.

Furthermore, according to United Nations Under-Secretary-General Anwarul Chowdhury, a successful conclusion in Asunción would signal formation of the first coherent organizing group of landlocked countries in global trade negotiations.

Also contributing to the Asunción meeting are the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); and the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), headquartered in Santiago, Chile; and the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation of the UN Development Programme.

Geography Imposes Costly Constraints

Costly, cumbersome and time-consuming overland shipping across national borders, distance from major world markets and inadequate transport infrastructure add costs to trade transactions of landlocked countries that sometimes exceed the value of the products themselves.

Studies indicate that a landlocked condition slows the economic growth rate of a country by 0.7 per cent, according to UN OHRLLS.  For the last decade, growth of the real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the landlocked developing countries was even slower than that of the average in nations designated as least developed countries (LDCs).

The meeting opens tomorrow with a message from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and statements by President of Paraguay Mr. Duarte Frutos, Foreign Minister Madame Leila Rashid, and Trade Minister Soulivong Daravong of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, the chair of the Landlocked Developing Countries Group.

For more information, in Asunción, contact José Maria Amarilla, tel.:  595 21 614443, mobile:  595 971 204541, e-mail:  jose.amarilla@undp.org. In New York, Tim Wall, tel.:  1 212 963-5851, e-mail:  wallt@un.org.

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For information media • not an official record