UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday called on the international community to provide more assistance to the world's 31 landlocked developing countries (LLDCs).
"Too many of the landlocked developing countries are not on track to meeting the MDGs," Ban said at the High-Level Meeting on the Mid-Term Review of the Implementation of the Almaty Program of Action on the Special Needs of Landlocked Developing Countries.
"According to the United Nations Development Program, they account for 10 of the 20 countries with the lowest level of human development," he said.
It is vital that landlocked developing countries increase their volume of exports in order to meet the MDGs, yet the biggest obstacle to this is the very high cost of transport, in some cases exceeding 70 percent of the export value, Ban told the opening session of the two-day meeting, calling for more vigorous international cooperation.
Despite some encouraging progress since 2003 in improving transit transport policies, much more needs to be done in infrastructure development as roads and railways remain inadequate, and many ports use obsolete cargo handling equipment, he said.
Integrated transport networks must be developed and customs operations modernized, Ban said.
Although LLDCs represent about 15 percent of states, their share of world exports has remained well below 1 percent, according to UN figures.
The 2003 Almaty Conference aimed to forge global partnerships to address the special needs of landlocked countries by tackling their continued marginalization from the world economy.
The Almaty Program of Action outlines a set of priorities for action in transit policy issues, infrastructure development and maintenance, international trade and trade facilitation, and international support measures.
Source:Xinhua
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