Unlocking Sustainable Intra-Regional Economic Development through Trade Facilitation

Dmitry Mariyasin, Deputy Executive Secretary, UNECE; His Excellency Galib Israfilov, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva; His Excellency Sharaf Sheralizoda, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Tajikistan to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva; Birgit Viohl, Head, Trade Facilitation Agreement Facility, WTO; Gregory Lecomte, Head of the OECD Central Asia Unit; Nurbek Maksutov, Counsellor on WTO affairs, Permanent Mission of the Kyrgyz Republic to the UN and other international organizations and Vice-Chair of the UN/CEFACT; Pierre Bonthonneau, Head of the Trade Facilitation Unit, ITC; Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, all protocols observed.

Good afternoon and welcome. I would like to thank our partners and friends at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe for organizing this Regional Forum on Sustainable Development 2025, and for giving us the chance to come together and find solutions to bring the SDGs closer within reach.

And I would like to thank the ambassadors on the panel, as well as our colleagues at the OECD and WTO, for joining us for what I’m sure will be a productive conversation on how to build deeper economic ties within and between Central Asia and Europe.

Now it’s become rote, almost banal, to begin speeches by saying that we are living in times of crisis.

But even as we’ve spent years careening from one crisis to the next, the past few months alone have shaken the international community down to its very foundation—and have left us facing some painful questions about where the future of sustainable development is heading.

But what I don’t want to do today is to dwell in despair, or to repeat familiar talking points about why multilateralism matters, or to minimize the sheer scale of the risks we face.

What I want to say instead today is this. We cannot afford to give in to crisis fatigue. We cannot risk losing our focus on the people who are relying on us to fight on their behalf. We cannot forget that people’s lives and livelihoods will be forever changed, for better or for worse, depending on whether and how we weather these storms.

And that means, frankly, that we need to make a clearer case for why trade matters for sustainable development.

We need to make sure that the narrative around trade doesn’t become one of tensions and retaliations, but of solutions and systemic change.

Which is why today we’re talking about concrete solutions, so that the future that is already unfolding before us isn’t defined solely by turbulence or headwinds or uncertainty.

I imagine that’s what has brought many of you here this afternoon.

And it’s why I want to focus today on trade facilitation, where we are seeing these kinds of solutions emerge thanks to the tireless efforts of domestic, regional, and international partners.

It was over a decade ago, after many sleepless nights in Bali, when WTO members reached a deal on the Trade Facilitation Agreement—an accord that, at the time, was hailed by governments as proof positive that international cooperation was still possible, and as one that could lead to between $400 billion to $1 trillion in GDP gains.

But I think, as we all know, it’s one thing to negotiate an international treaty—hard-won as it may be.

It’s quite another to then put it into practice, and to make sure that the benefits aren’t just concentrated among large firms, but that small and medium-sized firms are also able to take part effectively and shape the agreement’s implementation.

And it’s the kind of work that requires constant innovation and collaboration, as new technologies enter the scene, and as new crises put these hard-won gains under threat.

We’re seeing this in action in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where traders run the constant risk of being stymied by virtue of geography alone: namely, because these are primarily landlocked economies, where sea routes are scarce and transit times and costs can run high.

Forced to rely mainly on land routes, traders within these regions have long had to deal with a range of border procedures when going from one country to the next, while finding that regulatory agencies in neighbouring economies were not yet coordinating closely with one another.

Those are the types of challenges that, in the best of times, can wreak havoc on the economic prospects of countries and their SMEs.

And in far tougher times, including amid conflicts or geopolitical tensions, they can have far deeper implications—affecting whether these SMEs and the communities that depend on them sink or swim on nearly every possible metric of sustainable development.

But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Because being landlocked has also meant that these neighbouring economies have to rely on one another’s systems and infrastructure—and have had to learn to find ways to coordinate more closely, and make the most of digital tools.

At ITC, we have been working with our partners to find solutions that would make trade and transit work even better, and would bring these countries and communities closer.

It’s meant working with governments in these regions who are looking to join the World Trade Organization, like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, so they can prepare the necessary regulations at home, while building up the capacity of their trade institutions.

It’s meant investing in the competitiveness of local businesses and in the capacity of business support organizations, so that small and medium-sized enterprises in countries from Albania to Tajikistan can be better-equipped to compete and export sustainably, particularly in the agribusiness sector.

It's meant helping more SMEs take part in sustainable value chains, such as agriculture, textiles, and apparel, so that they can make the most of the trade facilitation reforms being put in place.

It’s meant working with governments in Central Asia to set up national trade facilitation portals that make it easier for traders to see what formalities they have to deal with at different borders, and help governments harmonize these procedures wherever possible.

And finally, it’s meant working to improve soft connectivity along the Trans-Caspian Corridor, which is one of the main strategic trade routes in the region, connecting East with West.

To make a long story short: these efforts are succeeding. And they are giving us key lessons about what works well and why—lessons that will be vital as we go into the Third UN Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDC3) this August, taking place in Turkmenistan.

You can see the progress for yourselves.

If you go today to the Kyzyl-Kiya border crossing, for instance, you’ll see how truck drivers who once faced a slow and onerous clearance process are now able to cross that border quickly and efficiently, thanks to an electronic queue management system, which ITC and the EU helped introduce.

It’s stories like these which remind us how, in the face of an increasingly chaotic global economy, we can still make a difference.

They are clear examples of how sustainable, intra-regional economic development is not only possible, but essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

And they are the types of concrete solutions that we also look forward to discussing with SME ministers, TPOs, and SMEs themselves in July, when we convene the first-ever SME ministerial in Durban, South Africa, together with the South African government.

That’s exactly what we need right now. Because, as we say at the International Trade Centre, by transforming trade, we can change lives.

And that is what I’m hoping we can focus on today.

Thank you all.