Djibouti "natural gateway" for landlocked Ethiopia, says delegate

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on landlocked developing countries and their maritime neighbours to forge strong partnerships to ease market access. In a message to a ministerial conference on the issue, which opened on the Kazakh city of Almaty on Thursday, Annan noted that the establishment of efficient transit transport systems was vital for the integration of landlocked developing countries into the world economy. The two-day conference - bringing together 30 landlocked countries and 33 transit access countries as well as donors and international organisations - is expected to endorse an agreement, known as the Almaty Programme of Action. The accord aims to ease massive transit costs in developing countries which can gobble up to 50 percent of their export earnings - particularly in Africa. Landlocked Ethiopia is attending the conference, along with its major transit access neighbour Djibouti. Before the Ethiopia-Eritrea border war of 1998, Ethiopia enjoyed preferential shipping rights at Assab port, which was the conduit for much of its trade with the outside world. But Djibouti's delegate to the Almaty conference, Mohamed Ali Ismael, told IRIN that Ethiopia's switch to Djibouti port had not had major cost implications. "Djibouti is the natural gateway of Ethiopia. Historically it was the case, except for a short period of around 20 years," he stated. He added that the diversion of Ethiopian traffic to Djibouti was no problem for the tiny Red Sea country. "The port can handle up to 5 million tonnes," he said. "The volume of Ethiopia's traffic is 3.5 million tonnes." Mohamed noted that the Ethio-Djibouti corridor was governed by an institutional framework in line with international standards. "Our policy is to work for the long term, notwithstanding the political environment," he stated.