Ulaanbaatar
Views exchanged on building productive capacities of landlocked developing countries
Society
Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. WTO Public Forum’s working session ‘Building
productive capacities in LLDCs in a post-COVID world’ was held on October 1.
Purevsuren Lundeg, Ambassador Extraordinary and
Plenipotentiary and Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of Mongolia to
the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva,
worked as a moderator. In his opening remarks, L. Purevsuren stressed that due
to the global coronavirus pandemic the LLDCs are facing more challenges than
ever, and underscored the need to build productive capacities to reduce LLDCs
dependency on raw materials, diversify the economy and increase the trade
volume and level of development. He also noted that the Productive Capacities
Index, developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD),
can be an effective indicator to define policies and measures towards
strengthening LLDCs’ productive capacities.
In the working session, Paul Akiwumi, Director of Division for
Africa, LDCs and Special Programmes at UNCTAD, Chukwuka Onyekwena, Executive
Director of the Center for the Study of the Economies of Africa, Heidi
Schroderus-Fox, Director, UN Office of the High Representative for LDCs, LLDCs
and SIDS attended as panelists to exchange views on the challenges in foreign
trade and development LLDCs are facing, and possibilities and policy recommendations
to address them.
