The passage of trade of landlocked countries through coastal territories to access shipping
services is generally governed by a standard principle: goods in transit and their carriage
are granted crossing free of fiscal duties and by the most convenient routes. In practice,
however, the implementation of this basic norm suffers from numerous operational
difficulties, resulting in high transport costs and long travel times, which undermine trade
competitiveness and ultimately the economic development of landlocked countries. Over
the past decade, under the Almaty Programme of Action launched in 2003, new analytical
tools and extensive field research have brought fresh knowledge about the mechanisms
explaining detected inefficiencies. Among other things, it has revealed that rent-seeking
stakeholders may play against improvements, making transit operations unnecessarily
complex and unpredictable, to the detriment of governmental and traders’ efforts. Thus, by
exposing conflicting forces at play along transit chains, the analysis shows that the trade of
landlocked countries primarily suffers from unreliability resulting from a lack of cooperation
among stakeholders, often explaining high transport costs and long transit times.