Paraguay To Host U.N. Meeting of 31 Landlocked Developing States

By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Paraguay is hosting an August 9-10 international meeting that will address trade problems of the world's landlocked developing nations.

In an August 8 statement, the United Nations -- which is sponsoring the event in Paraguay's capital city of Asuncion -- said it will focus on helping landlocked nations improve their access to seaports and with other measures to make it easier for them to engage in world trade.

Trade ministers from the world's 31 landlocked developing nations will be at the Asuncion event – providing them with a forum to create a common platform for the round of trade talks of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that began in 2002 in Doha, Qatar, among more than 140 participating WTO nations.

Besides Paraguay, the 31 landlocked developing states include Bolivia in Latin America; countries in Africa including Botswana, Burundi, and Zimbabwe; Mongolia and Nepal in Asia; and Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in Central Asia.

The trade ministers are expected to adopt an "outcome document" outlining the common position of landlocked developing countries to strengthen their collective negotiating capacity in the Doha round.  The outcome document will be submitted to the 60th regular session of the U.N. General Assembly in September and to the WTO's Sixth Ministerial Conference in December.

The trade problems of landlocked developing countries were discussed at a U.N. conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2003.  Strategies to address these problems in WTO agreements would be a "decisive step" in putting those discussions' ideas into practice, the U.N. said, adding that a successful conclusion at Asuncion would "signal formation of the first coherent organizing block of landlocked countries for global trade negotiations."

The U.N. says costly, cumbersome, and time-consuming overland shipping, in addition to distance from major world markets and inadequate transport infrastructure, adds costs to trade activities of landlocked countries that often exceed the value of the products that are being shipped.

Such disadvantages can slow the economic growth rate of a country by an average of 0.7 percent, said the U.N. Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.

The head of that U.N. office, Anwarul Chowdhury, said at a 2003 regional meeting of landlocked developing states -- also held in Asuncion -- that landlocked states are among the poorest of the developing countries, with the weakest growth rates.

Chowdhury warned that "there is a real risk" of these states being "further marginalized in the world economy," and he predicted that "the gap between landlocked developing countries and other developing countries will further widen, unless this negative trend is arrested."