ECO participated in the International Ministerial Conference of

Landlocked and Transit Developing Countries

Press Release

ECO Secretary General Ambassador Bekzhasar Narbayev participated at the International Ministerial Conference of Landlocked and Transit Developing Countries and Donor Countries and International and Financial Institutions held recently at Almaty, Kazakhstan where Ministerial participants from over 100 countries were present to deal with special needs of the landlocked countries. The meeting was inaugurated by President of Kazakhstan on August 28, 2003.

The Conference adopted the Almaty Declaration committing the international community to facilitate further development of landlocked developing countries while noting the important role that the simplification, streamlining and standardization of transit procedures and documentation and the application of information technology that had played in enhancing the efficiency of transit systems supporting speedy link-up of economies.

In his statement, ECO Secretary General Ambassador Narbayev effectively highlighted the fundamental development disadvantage of landlocked countries as well as the transit developing countries to overcome lack of their access to the sea, remoteness from major international markets and inadequate transport infrastructure. Ambassador Narbayev made an appeal to the international donor agencies and institutions to consider specific financial packages for development of infrastructure in the region as well as promotion of application of ICT for enhancing efficiency of transit trade and transport systems as well as speedy integration of the economies of the landlocked countries to the global economic system.

Further, Secretary General Ambassador Narbayev said that the ECO region, with the assistance of the international community and because of their initiatives such as TRACECA, SPECA, Silk Road area development project had come to have an adequate infrastructure to cope up with the present volume of transit trade and traffic. Nevertheless, a lot more was still needed to develop sound trade and transport policies with a regional and international outlook. In this spirit, he urged that the removal of non-physical barriers and addressing the cross border transit, transport, customs and investment issues should be given priority.  He warned that building infrastructure and creating more alternate corridors within the region alone would not be enough to integrate these countries to global markets or bring about economic prosperity to their nationals.

Ambassador Narbayev further said that since its inception in 1985, ECO had sought to promote harmonized and well coordinated policies to harness the vast potential of the region. The other idea, which ECO has pursued with vigour till todate, had been to strengthen the institutional and legal framework to offset the operational impediments of Transit regime as well as to promote a culture of understanding and friendship among its member states. All these measures would virtually pave the way to closer integration of economies  when the ECO documents such as ECOTA (2003), TTFA (1998), TA (1995) and different Plans of Action in the fields of Agriculture, Energy and Environment will be put into effect, he said.

Perhaps, the time had come for ECO to give a serious thought to emulate the European Union policies in the commercial areas such as Transport, Insurance, Trade, Investment, Environment, in a way that the emerging coordinated approach should address the specific needs and requirements of the ECO member states. In this drive, if considered appropriate by the member states, the international community may extend generous support and financial assistance to overcome the teething problems of some ECO member states who may suffer in the initial stages. A well-oiled integrated regional policy alone can help reduce the poverty in the region and link it effectively with the international markets. With this mindset, he added ECO could pursue improvement in our economies.

Continuing he said that at the same time ECO recognized the need to improve legal and regulatory framework within the region and in this context appreciate the worthy job already done by the concerned international agencies. The universally acceptable protocols, agreements and conventions coupled with best practices and models are available to guide our relevant authorities to harmonize and simplify complicated and obsolete procedures to ensure efficient development of Transit Trade and Transport. We have rightly entered into partnership with UN as well as international and regional organizations to harness the forces of synergy. Now we have to be more vigilant at the operational level for improving policies, legal, institutional and training frameworks to match international standards.

Elaborating the recent achievements of his Organization, Ambassador Narbayev said that in the field of trade, the ECO member states have successfully signed a forward looking Trade Agreement which aims to create a region of open trade, consistent with WTO and other multilateral organizations. The agreement is comprehensive in terms of commodity coverage and will be implemented gradually over eight years and scale down the existing tariffs to a maximum of 15% on 80% of the goods traded. The Organization had been helping, through the institution of the heads of Customs Authorities, early operationalization of important international Transit Transport  and Trade agreements like TIR Carnet and WCO regulations including the revised Kyoto Convention on Customs.

In the transport sector, ECO had focused on suggesting to the member states to improve the existing infrastructure to meet the new demands and challenges. ECO had started a regular container train service, on fortnightly basis, from Istanbul to Almaty. Efforts are underway to initiate a similar passenger train to promote people to people contact and small businesses. A study to promote multimodal transportation within the region with the assistance of IDB and UNCTAD is at  higher stage of implementation.

The Secretary General concluded that each nation had its own strategy and environment which always prompted it to adopt specific policies and measures to address the needs of the region. ECO, as an organization, had always and would continue to promote regional cooperation in order to effectively convert the geographic disadvantage of the majority of its LLDCs members into an advantage. “Success is our fate. We in ECO are on the right track and sincere in our objectives”.

The world community should not hesitate to redress the immediate needs of the region to create a supporting environment for absorption of ICT and investment, further strengthening the national trends towards competition and  outward integration. The World Bank, IDB, Asian Development Bank, ERDB and other financial institutions may improve upon their parallel funding operations in the region, he concluded.

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