We all know that a landlocked state or landlocked countries is not sovereign state
entirely enclosed by land or whose only coastlines lies on closed seas. Like Nepal
there are other 49 countries that are landlocked. Landlocked developing countries
(LLDCs), as a group, are among the poorest countries in the world. . Given their lack
of direct access to seaborne trade, LLDCs find themselves on an inherently
disadvantaged development path compared with countries with coastlines as deep-
sea ports. Land locked often coincides with other factors such as remoteness from
major markets and difficult topography, as well as tropical or desert ecology. In
addition, poor infrastructure, inefficient logistics systems and weak institutions
compound the adverse effects of geography, leading to high trade transaction costs.
Such severe difficulties are amplified by the LLDCs’ dependence on the political
stability, the infrastructure and the institutional quality of coastal transit countries.
These challenges not only affect economic growth but have also major ramifications
for social and environmental aspects of development. It can take twice the amount
of time for imported goods to actually travel from port to major destination. It takes
far more than that time in landlocked countries depending in your location may be 4
weeks to 6 months. You never know until it arrives. Shipping costs are high in
landlocked countries, we in Nepal pay 50 percent more than what other countries
pay for. Hence the Shipping cost in Nepal is expensive.
It is generally perceived that due to lack of direct access to the sea, landlocked
countries are primarily marginalized from major trade related networks and hardly
benefit from trade opportunities due to their extreme reliance on their transit
neighbours who may either have a weak or well-developed infrastructure (which
have either detrimental or beneficial implications for trade and growth). Besides this
usual perception most trade experts hold, what other advantages and possibly
disadvantages are there for Land lock countries like Nepal and many others.
The economic and other disadvantages experienced by such countries makes the
majority of landlocked countries Least Developed Countries (LDC), with inhabitants
of these countries occupying the bottom billion tier of the world's population in
terms of poverty. Apart from Europe, there is not a single successful highly
developed landlocked country when measured with the Human Development Index
(HDI) and nine of the twelve countries with the lowest HDI scores are landlocked.
Landlocked countries that rely on transoceanic trade usually suffer a cost of trade
that is double of their maritime neighbours. Landlocked countries experience
economic growth 6% less of their non-landlocked countries, holding other variables
constant.
The United Nation holds the view that high transport costs due to distance and
terrain result in the erosion of competitive edge for exports from landlocked
countries. In addition, it recognizes the constraints on landlocked countries to be
mainly physical, as in lack of direct access to the sea, isolation from world markets
and high transit costs due to physical distance. It also attributes geographic
remoteness as one of the most significant reasons as why developing landlocked
nations are unable to alleviate themselves while European landlocked cases are
mostly developed because of short distances to the sea through well-developed
transient countries. One other commonly cited factor is the administrative burdens
associated with border crossings as there is a heavy load of bureaucratic procedures,
paperwork, custom charges, and most importantly, traffic delay due to border wait
times, which affect delivery contracts. Delays and inefficiency compound
geographically, where a 2 to 3 week wait due to border customs between Uganda
and Kenya results in the impossibility of booking ships ahead of time in Mombasa,
furthering delivery contract delays. Despite these explanations, it is also important to
consider the transit countries that neighbour LLDCs, in which goods of LLDCs are
exported via the maritime ports of these countries
