100
Connecting Landlocked Developing Countries to Markets
Importance of Road Transport in Transit Countries Of the three surface transport modes, roads provide the main transport infrastructure and services linking most landlocked countries to their transit neighbors, and for many, it is the only transport mode available. Only 15 LLDCs have a rail link to a port in a transit neighbor, two have only a river-to-sea or lake connection, seven have both, while six have neither and rely on roads for all their international land transport (see chapter 7, table 7.1). Even for those LLDCs that do have rail and waterway (or lake) connections to their neighbors, the freight volume using these modes is rarely sufficient to make them financially sustainable. For a sample of nine Asian LLDC corridors, land transport costs make up more than 80 percent of the cost and 60 percent of the time in getting goods to and from a deepwater port in a transit country, and most of this time and cost is incurred in the transit country rather than the LLDC (table 6.1). Border crossings and ports together account for only 17 percent of the land transport cost and 39 percent of the land transport time, while land transport in the LLDC itself (including loading and unloading of the trucks) accounts for 27 percent of the cost and 22 percent of the time. The largest share of both cost and time is taken up by land transport in the transit country, 56 percent of the cost and 39 percent of the time. For selected LLDC trade corridors in Africa, Asia, and South America, only a third of the transport cost (and a little more of the transport time) occurs in the LLDC itself, and in some cases, these shares fall as low as 10 percent (table 6.2). In only one corridor does more than half the transport cost occur in the LLDC (La Paz via Arica to Los Angeles), and in only three corridors does more than half the travel time occur in the LLDC (Mongolia via Tianjin, China; Cambodia via Laem Chabang, Thailand; and Bolivia via Arica, Chile).
Table 6.1
Transit Times for Land Transport in Nine LLDC Corridors in Asia
Source of cost and time Land transport in LLDC Border crossing Land transport in transit country Port Total land transport
Cost (%)
Time (%)
27 7 56 10 100
22 14 39 25 100
Source: Author estimates based on data from United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and United States Agency for International Development.