Background
Attaining inclusive economic growth and sustainable development in landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) remains a daunting challenge. Decades of domestic policy reform efforts and international support mechanisms in favour of LLDCs have not led to substantial socioeconomic improvements. Geographical challenges or remoteness from main markets and the resulting high trade and transport costs undermined export competitiveness and these countries’ ability to attract and benefit from FDI as well as integrate into regional and global value chains. These challenges are further exacerbated by their heavy dependence on exports of primary commodities. Out of the 32 LLDCs in the world, 26 of them are dependent on primary commodities for more than 60% of their exports. This means that economic growth is highly concentrated in a single sector that is not very labour-intensive, and the gains of growth are not automatically shared broadly. This has also made economic growth highly vulnerable to external shocks, such as changes in world prices of commodities. Overcoming commodity-dependence and embarking on a sustainable and inclusive growth path requires fostering productive capacities and structural economic transformation, including diversifying exports away from primary commodities.
Fostering productive capacities and structural economic transformation is key to reducing the vulnerabilities of landlocked developing countries, creating jobs, and reducing poverty and inequality. Diversification of their economies and progressive reduction of dependency on extraction and simple processing of commodities can bring about significant gains in achieving developmental advancements. Although some progress has been made, landlocked developing countries as a whole lag behind other developing countries in building productive capacities and achieving significant structural transformation that would put their economies on a sustained growth and development path to achieve the objectives of the Vienna Programme of Action (VPoA) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Objectives
The main objective of this side event is to illustrate the importance of fostering productive capacities and structural economic transformation and to examine how impact investing and innovative resource mobilization can foster these to accelerate progress towards achieving the VPoA targets and SDGs. The side-event will provide opportunities for exchange of experiences and best practices for improving policy formulation and implementation in LLDCs with specific focus on:
- How to accelerate and enhance productive capacities to foster structural transformation in LLDCs to enable achieving globally agreed goals and targets;
- Which new and innovative policies can contribute to attracting impact investors to sustainable development in LLDCs;
- How to address the challenges of landlocked developed countries; and
- How to address the challenges of economic diversification in landlocked developing countries.
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For more information on UNCTAD's work in support of the landlocked developing countries, please see: https://unctad.org/ALDC.
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