Landlocked nations' summit to open in Almaty

A United Nations conference to address ways of mitigating the special problems faced by landlocked countries - the first ever to discuss this topic - is set to open in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty, on Thursday. "Lack of territorial access to the sea, remoteness and isolation from world markets, and high transit costs continue to impose serious constraints on the overall socioeconomic development of landlocked developing countries," the resident representative for the UN in Kazakhstan, Fikret Akcura, told IRIN. According to the UN, the two-day International Ministerial Conference of Landlocked and Transit Developing Countries seeks to negotiate systematic amelioration of those problems by establishing cooperation between donors, multilateral agencies and transit states - those situated between landlocked countries and sea outlets. Participants are expected to focus on freedom of access to the sea, infrastructure development, efficiency of transport operations and international support measures. Governments will negotiate agreements on cutting red tape, time, and costs in goods from landlocked nations reaching markets through transit access countries. In terms of landlocked developing countries, Africa leads all continents, with 15 of the world's 30 such states, 10 of which spend about 40 percent of their export earnings on transport and insurance services. Such issues are particularly relevant to the five Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, all of which are landlocked. Along with Liechtenstein, Uzbekistan has the added distinction of being doubly landlocked, before gaining access to the high seas. By virtue of their landlocked status, Central Asian nations suffer from high costs affecting both imports and exports, which impede their development; reliance on the goodwill of transit neighbours in order to gain access to world markets; and dependence on the transport infrastructure and administrative structures of their transit neighbours. These disadvantages are in turn compounded by the economic transition process taking place in Central Asia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. "Distance to the nearest viable port is 1,700 km for Turkmenistan, but as far away as 3,600 km for Kyrgyzstan," Akcura noted. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, though well endowed with exportable natural resources such as oil, gas and minerals, have to transport these by way of pipelines and railway networks, journeying across transit countries like Iran and Russia, themselves competitors in the same markets. If Kazakhstan were not landlocked, it would have attracted far higher volumes of foreign direct investment to its oil sector, and its exports would have been far greater, Akcura said. And whereas the other three Central Asian countries do not have major export commodities, they are nevertheless similarly constrained in their trade. Moreover, the long distances which must be traversed on mostly ill-maintained roads acts as a brake to the development of cultural and political relations with the outside world. "This places an obvious limitation on the cultural transformation that is needed for sustained reforms for building democracy and market economy," he added. Asked what the way forward should be, Akcura stressed the need for greater regional cooperation and that of attracting increased foreign investment. Currently, none of the five countries has the consumer populations and levels of disposable income to attract major investments by multinationals - except in the oil and gas sectors. The five countries desperately needed to create diversified economies, open up productive employment through small- and medium-sized enterprises, enhance technology and management by way of foreign expertise, and satisfy their region's 55 million consumers, who are no longer prepared to accept Soviet-era lifestyles, Akcura stressed. "The first step in that direction is more active economic cooperation: such a move can only invite an enthusiastic response in the form of favourable trade concessions by the international community and foreign direct investment by the private sector, which will greatly enhance regional liberalisation efforts," he concluded.