Foreign Secretary Bharat Raj Paudyal said that greater efforts will be necessary to recover from the pandemic and rally on a growth path. “We must enhance productive capacity, diversify the economy, build sustainable and resilient infrastructures, and upgrade connectivity to regional and global markets,” said foreign secretary Paudyal.

“We can change our destiny of being ‘prisoners of geography’ to ‘pioneers of prosperity’, all we need is a strong solidarity and cooperation among ourselves and greater support from our transit countries and development partners,” he emphasized.

Addressing the 20th Annual Ministerial Meeting of Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) held virtually on the margins of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly today, foreign Secretary Paudyal highlighted the pre-existing challenges of LLDCs such as excessive reliance on transit countries, low productive capacity, and poor connectivity compounded by the unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 and climate change and called for an enhanced level of international support measures in the form of ODA, FDI, aid for trade and technology transfer.

While highlighting Nepal’s vision to transform the country from a ‘landlocked’ to a ‘land-linked’, he stressed the need for a scaled-up and renewed partnership between LLDCs, transit countries and development partners.

The Meeting adopted a Ministerial Declaration at its conclusion.