Bangladesh to graduate from LDC in 2024: UN

Bangladesh will be among 16 countries that are expected to graduate from the group of the least developed countries by 2025, according to the United Nations.

In a report published on Tuesday, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said Bangladesh is projected to graduate in 2024 meeting all three criteria: income, human asset index and economic vulnerability index.

If it happens, Bangladesh will be one of the three countries that will graduate from the LDCs. The other two countries will be Djibouti and Yemen.

The report said some, but not all, of the 16 countries that are projected to have graduated by 2025 are likely to achieve graduation with momentum through broad-based development of productive capacities, diversification and structural economic transformation.

“This is the case for some manufactures-exporters (Bangladesh and Bhutan) and mixed exporters (the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Myanmar),” the UN agency said in its report -- the Least Developed Countries Report 2016.

The report also said most of the countries whose graduation is expected by 2024 have included graduation as an explicit goal in their development plans and programmes.

Five of these countries -- Bangladesh, Bhutan, Laos, Myanmar and Nepal --have set explicit timetables, it said.

It said Bangladesh is among countries that have brought in tax reforms to improve government revenues by simplifying and modernising tax collection and expanding the tax base.

The report said following several years of apparent resilience to the international economic and financial crisis, economic growth in the LDCs has declined steeply since 2012, reaching a low of 3.6 percent in 2015.

This is the slowest pace of expansion this century, and far below the target rate of at least 7 percent per annum recommended by the 2011 Programme of Action for the LDCs for 2011–2020 (the so-called Istanbul Programme of Action.

“Such weak economic growth is a serious obstacle to generating and mobilising domestic resources for structural transformation and investment in the development of productive capacities. It also hampers progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

The economic outlook for LDCs as a group for the next two years remains uncertain in the face of a lackluster global economic environment, a continuing slowdown of international trade and a sharp decline in growth or even recession in many developing countries.

In some LDCs, the prospects are aggravated by risks in the domestic political environment, the United Nations said.