Development of Dry Ports

Geography adds dramatically to the development challenges. In some cases, long distances within individual countries create vast tracts of hinterland areas such as in China, India, United States or the Russian Federation. Inland sites economically linked to the coastal networks, ICDs and CFSs as dry ports in generic terms, serve as nodes for consolidation and distribution of goods with functions analogous to those of a seaport. The shippers are not only enabled to look for speed, and reliable door-to-door services, but also for a complete logistics solution, which necessitates multimodal integration.

In Asia and the Pacific, it is mainly coastal regions that have benefited from the current phase of globalization by becoming important nodes in the regional production networks. In the context of promoting the Asian Highway and Trans Asian Railway projects, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) examined the potential of intermodal transport and freight modal interchanges and inland ports for alleviating the trade and transit cost disadvantages of land-locked countries and remote hinterlands of littoral states. Extending the developmental impulses to the hinterlands linked to gateways, Asian Highway and Trans Asian Railway projects are envisaged to serve as catalysts for infrastructural nodes in the region which may take different names, dry ports, ICDs, CFSs, logistics zones or parks, freight villages, distriparks, et al. They will essentially perform the same function of facilitating seamless and cost effective transportation of goods, although they differ in their structure.

During the course, topics covered by experts are as under:

Training Course Participants

Sok San CAMODIA	Aung Myo Myint MYANMAR	Kyaw Kyaw Myo MAYANMAR	Ananta Acharya NEPAL
Waqar Ahmad Shahid PAKISTAN	Tariq Latif PAKISTAN	Jayakody Mawatha, SRI LANKA	P. Nihal SRI LANKA
Dhammasak Dhurakit THAILAND	Siripong Koomprapan THAILAND	Han Minh Viet VIETNAM	Do Duy Hai VIETNAM