REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, LUSAKA -- A top United Nations (UN) official has called for increased aid for trade funding to Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) to boost their economic growth and social development, the Zambia Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

Speaking in southern Zambia's Livingstone city on the sidelines of a three-day high-level ministerial meeting of LLDCs, UN under- secretary and representative of LLDCs and small islands, Gyan Acharya said there was need for targeted funding towards infrastructure-related projects.

According to him, lack of territorial access to the sea, isolation from world markets and high transit costs have continued to pose serious constraints on the overall socio-economic development of LLDCs.

"LLDCs are faced with multiple challenges such as transit delays at ports, numerous documents required to cross borders and lack of linking infrastructure between landlocked countries and transit nations," he was quoted as saying by the paper.

It is important for international policies to be framed in a way that supports the need for LLDCs to access the international market, he added.

The official further said multilateral development banks have come up with a new report on how they could promote investment in the economic sector of LLDCs, adding that the meeting has also attracted representatives from multilateral institutions in order to come up with modalities of how they could help LLDCs.

The three-day high-level meeting, to be opened by Zambian President Edgar Lungu, has attracted about 200 delegates from 32 LLDCs. The meeting is focusing on the special development challenges faced by the world's 32 LLDCs.

The meeting is a follow-up to the 2014 second United Nations Conference on LLDCs that was held in Vienna, Austria, where UN member states adopted the ambitious Vienna Program of Action for the LLDCs for the Decade 2014-2024.

The meeting is expected to review and identify opportunities and bottlenecks in landlocked developing countries in terms of implementation in priority areas of the action plan, to provide a platform for sharing of best practices, experiences and initiatives at the national, regional and global level. It will also discuss and conceptualize a way forward in implementing the action plan, including the strategy, tools and indicators for measuring the progress.

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