Resource information
A ministerial intergovernmental
conference in pursuit of these commitments was held in
August 2003 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The conference agreed to
the Almaty Programme of Action (APoA), calling for joint
efforts by transit and landlocked countries-with substantial
technical and financial assistance from other countries-to
revise their regulatory frameworks affecting trade movements
and to improve their trade-related infrastructure. The two
World Bank strategies and the APoA have the same overarching
objective: to support the countries targeted by the proposed
objectives and actions, in order to achieve inclusive and
sustainable development. The report is divided into six
sections. Section one provides a comparison of Landlocked
Developing Countries (LLDCs) and transit countries in terms
of trade performance. It particularly focuses on the growth
of total trade and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita
in light of trade openness and export diversification. This
is followed in section two by an assessment of logistics
performance and trade costs of landlocked countries, and
their transit and coastal neighbors, on the basis of the
Logistics Performance Index (LPI). The operational
challenges for traders in LLDCs, including unreliable supply
chains and delays, as well the underlying causes, are
discussed in section three. Section four then focuses on the
various activities of the World Bank to address the key
priorities of the Almaty programme, with a focus on regional
integration and trade facilitation. In continuation, section
five highlights some of the regional integration and trade
facilitation projects and initiatives that are being
implemented. The report concludes by re-emphasizing the
continued validity of several of the original APoA
priorities for financial and technical assistance, in the
context of the World Bank's overall strategic goals
(section six).
