UN SUPPORTS MONGOLIA'S HOSTING INT’L CONFERENCE ON TRADE FACILITATING

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The United Nations (UN) has backed a proposal of Mongolia’s government to organize an international conference on facilitating trade for the landlocked countries in Ulaanbaatar. The proposal was put forward by the Minister of Foreign Affairs L.Bold during the 68th session of the UN General Assembly in September in New York, USA, to host the conference in a second quarter of 2014. The UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States has supported this proposal, so our government needs to fix up the conference’s dates. Recent years, Mongolia has been creating initiatives on protecting interests of the landlocked developing nations and making effort to tackle problems facing these countries. As a result, an official group has been set up for the landlocked developing countries, and the high representative office has been created at the UN Secretariat. There are 48 landlocked nations in the world. Statistics say that their economic growth stood at 6.7% in 2010, declined to 5.9% in 2011. Moreover, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 19 landlocked nations is less than USD 1,000. Experts consider that it is vital to conduct international scientific and research works on presenting and explaining difficulties these states undergo and on ways of overcoming the problems. For this reason Mongolia has initiated a foundation of the International Think-Tank for Landlocked Developing Countries, and it is ready to start its activities.