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Connecting Landlocked Developing Countries to Markets
freight forwarders) already offer training and accreditation schemes, but other types of operators (such as 3PLs) have yet to achieve this role. Therefore, international agencies involved in promoting increased international trade have an important role in facilitating the creation and development of such international organizations and, in the meantime, in fulfilling the training role themselves.
Dry Ports While international lending agencies can promote ICDs, they are best developed by their potential operators and users. LLDCs have been cooperating with their transit neighbors in establishing ICDs at key LLDC corridor points. The public sector can take a role in assembling the parcels of land for ICD use in the best locations—for example, at the intersection of the transit corridors to a deepwater port in a transit country and a ring road in the main industrial city of the LLDC. The government also has an important role in the development of ICDs in ensuring that trade regulations allow trade contracts to designate the ICD as a final destination (the standard international trade contract allows designation only to and from the deepwater port, so the onward contract to an ICD in an LLDC has to be contracted separately).
Notes 1. The main sources for information on railways in developing countries, in addition to the project’s own case studies, are Bullock 2009; Kerali and Rastrogi 2004; and UNESCAP 2003. 2. The minimum viable distance for railways to compete with trucks for freight transport has been variously estimated between 400 km and 800 km. 3. But this line did have severe operating conditions (such as a 6 percent gradient in parts) that would have made its feasible threshold distance higher than most other lines. 4. TRACECA is an international transport program of the EU and 14 member states of the Eastern European, Caucasian, and Central Asian regions. It has a permanent secretariat, originally financed by the European Commission, in Baku, Azerbaijan, and a regional office in Odessa, Ukraine. The organization has been entirely financed by member countries since 2009. 5. ALL has now assumed operating responsibilty for the Uganda to Kenya railway. 6. The Niger River in West Africa, serving Mali and Niger, is excluded as it has no navigable outlet to the sea and is navigable for only about 1,500 km of its total length of more than 6,500 km. There are proposals to ugrade the section