KASESE-BOTA

By CATHERINE NYIRENDA-
LANDLOCKED Developing Countries (LLDC) should urgently shift focus in accelerating economic growth by overcoming physical and geographical barriers that disadvantage them, Zambia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Mwaba Kasese-Bota has said.
Dr Kasese-Bota said Zambia’s priority areas as chair of the LLDCs, would be to increase the visibility and profile of the LLDC group at the international stage.
Dr Kasese-Bota said this when she addressed Ambassadors of the LLDCs at the UN headquarters.
She said this in a statement issued through the First Secretary for Press and Public Relations at Zambia’s Permanent Mission at the UN, Chibaula Silwamba yesterday.
“The two years of my chairing will aim to study the structural and process challenges in a holistic manner to develop a better resolve to LLDCs’ enhanced economic growth and global competitiveness as well as social and environmental development,” Dr Bota said.
She said the LLDC’s agenda by its nature demanded extensive resource and capital mobilisation efforts at all fronts.
She said engagements with the international community the LLDCs, transit countries, development partners and donors including private sector, was an indispensable action.
She said the international community had an obligation to ensure that the LLDCs thrived in development.
“Our key approach is engagement, commitment and cooperation by all key stakeholders in order to have favourable implementation and action for tangible results that will improve our countries and regions’ development and welfare in a sustainable way,” she said.
He said there was need to ensure that the group collectively engaged with all UN members States around the special needs of the LLDCs and enhanced development dialogue with major development partners.
Zambia was recently elected to the two-year rotational chairmanship of the LLDCs Group.
The LLDC comprised 32 member countries, which is home to more than 400 million people, with a share of the world trade of less than 1 per cent.
At least 50 per cent of LLDC countries are at the bottom of the least developed countries poverty ladder and faces on average 2.4 times higher the cost of trade, transport costs that makes the group’s exports and imports more costly than in transit countries.
The LLDCs Group seeks to address the challenges of its members and improve the wellbeing of nationals in these countries.