I. Introduction

I join Under Secretary General Diarra in welcoming our distinguished speakers, in particular the Ministers from the landlocked developing countries, who will speak about their national experiences and the expectations they have on the link up of Trade Facilitation and Aid for Trade.

The main theme of UNCTAD XII – “Addressing the opportunities and challenges of globalisation for development” – provides a perfect occasion for exploring the synergies of two important processes – Trade Facilitation and Aid for Trade – and to see how best they can deliver results for a group of developing countries disadvantaged by the handicap of geography: the landlocked developing countries or LLDCs. If any group of countries has a key and unarguable interest in a solid WTO Trade Facilitation agreement, and the technical assistance and capacity building support that would go with it, then it must be the landlocked [note 1] especially the 31 developing nations among them .

We are fortunate to have eminent experts with us today who will guide us through the different paths on how the LLDCs can achieve maximum benefits from both Trade Facilitation and Aid for Trade. And we also have with us the vital decision makers who can tell us about the real difficulties faced by the landlocked and how their countries could gain from these two initiatives.

II. Trade Facilitation

The main objective of Trade Facilitation is to reduce the costs associated with moving goods across borders – i.e. the transit costs of internationally traded goods. Policies, regulations and customs practices that help speed the passage of goods to and from ports and inland frontiers can and should be improved. That is what the Trade Facilitation commitments, at the national, regional and the multilateral level, should achieve.

Let me just highlight, for a minute the multilateral process, which is receiving a boost by the ongoing negotiations on Trade Facilitation at the WTO. An AITIC background document circulated at this meeting provides the latest state of play on the WTO negotiations on Trade Facilitation.

A basic requirement in these Trade Facilitation negotiations is the capacity or needs assessment that must be done at the country level. This is directly related to the kind of technical assistance and capacity-building needs identified by a country. As pointed out in the AITIC background paper on Trade Facilitation, it is on the basis of the needs assessment that the LLDCs would be able to “notify” the WTO with respect to taking on the Trade Facilitation obligations. Moreover, the Needs Assessment forms the basis for capacity-building plans which could attract donor support.

Clearly, the needs assessment is not just a critical first step for all the LLDCs, but also for the 34 neighbouring transit countries with which making progress on Trade Facilitation is intimately linked. But only attention to much broader inadequacies – such as human, port and transport infrastructure – will truly lower trading costs and improve competitiveness of goods flowing from landlocked countries and, indeed, their neighbours, the transit countries. That is where Aid for Trade enters the frame.

Such identification of individual and regional LLDCs’ technical assistance and capacity-building requirements will prove useful in implementing the new Trade Facilitation Agreement. As you know, the obligation to implement the Agreement is linked to the provision of necessary technical assistance and capacity building needs of developing countries.

With such built-in commitment to help implement the provisions of the Trade Facilitation Agreement, it is clearly in the interest of all LLDCs, as indicated in the Almaty Programme of Action and reiterated in the Asuncion and Ulaanbaatar Declarations, to cut the time required to take advantage of the potential benefits of the Trade Facilitation Agreement even before it enters into force.

The fact that regional economic communities or trade arrangements, with the help of regional development banks, multilateral financial institutions and other international organisations - in each of the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America - have already embarked on regional integration projects, is a positive development. The regional approaches and solutions are particularly important for the LLDCs. They can help outline the priority needs by way of technical expertise, capacity-building, as well as infrastructure gaps.

III. Aid for Trade

Such regional needs assessment for the LLDCs will be useful not just in the Trade Facilitation process but also in taking advantage of the Aid for Trade initiative. The first Aid for Trade regional reviews showed that regional cooperation and integrationin most of the developing regions of the three continents remains in its early stages. A key objective of Aid for Trade should be to help drive regional integration. Because a number of supply-side constraints are regional or cross-border in nature, therefore regional infrastructure and capacity projects are important to target the key structural constraints and policy bottlenecks.

For the LLDCs, the list of needed reforms on the Trade Facilitation agenda can be indeed comprehensive. A number of areas relating to speedy customs clearance have already been identified in the WTO negotiations on Trade Facilitation. The scope of trade-related infrastructure is also wide, as it can cover the physical infrastructure needs as well as institutional capacity to deal with changes in policy and procedures. Each of these activities can be identified as eligible candidate for support through Aid for Trade. In other words, to implement a reforms package on the Trade Facilitation front, the LLDCs have recourse to the assistance committed to as part of the WTO Trade Facilitation negotiations as well as under the Aid for Trade initiative.

A specific reforms package for the LLDCs can help concentrate on their specific transport and transit bottlenecks, the improvement of their trade-related infrastructure as well the physical infrastructure of roads, railways, energy and, communications – elements that define the competitiveness of LLDCs’ products and services in international trade. Of course, the identification of such needs through technical assistance, institutional or policy capacity-building needs or by way of physical infrastructure could itself become an identified need that could attract assistance under Aid for Trade.

Within the context of the Trade Facilitation negotiations at the WTO, capacity/needs assessment is already taking place for some members which have sought it. However, after negotiations are wrapped up, all developing, least-developed and some transition economies will undertake assessments. These are intended to identify existing local capacity and gaps and, from that, the technical assistance and capacity building requirements necessary to take on those WTO Trade Facilitation commitments the member considers appropriate.

Any reforms package for the 31 LLDCs will need to have components also for the 34 transit neighbouring countries through which internationally traded goods must pass. And they must reflect on national priorities, especially in terms of promoting the development of the agricultural sector which provides the maximum employment and livelihood to millions in the landlocked developing countries. The long-term development objective has to be to “land-link” the currently land-locked countries in such a way that geography is no longer seen as a barrier as it is today.

IV. Programme Highlights

Our programme for today will first have speakers, experts, I should say, who will give important insights into the main subjects of our discussion. This will be followed by presentations on national experiences and perspectives in progress towards trade Facilitation and Aid for Trade. We will have one hour at our disposal for discussions and we look forward to an interesting exchange of views.

Our first speaker will be HE Mr Rigoberto Gauto, Ambassador of Paraguay to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva and the Coordinator of the LLDCs at the WTO. As someone intimately involved in promoting the interest of landlocked developing countries in the Trade Facilitation negotiations at the WTO, Ambassador Gauto will amplify on the trade facilitation bottlenecks facing LLDCs.

Our second speaker will be Ms. Lakshmi Puri, the Acting Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD. She is also the Director of the Division on International Trade in Goods and Services and Commodities. In her presentation, Ms Puri will trace the linkages that need to be drawn between Trade Facilitation and Aid for Trade, especially in the light of UNCTAD’s own experience of working with the land-locked developing countries and their transit neighbours.

Our third speaker is Mr David Luke, Senior Trade Adviser and Coordinator of UNDP Trade and Human Development Unit in Geneva. He will focus on the already-mentioned key element, the Needs Assessment in Aid for Trade. UNDP is one of the six international agencies involved in coordinating the Enhanced Integrated Framework, where the preparation of the trade diagnostic needs assessment can be equally relevant in making use of the Aid for Trade initiative.

Note 1: Of the 43 countries that are considered landlocked – 31 of them are landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), of which 16 are least-developed countries (LDCs). (return to text)