At the request of the Government of Bangladesh, the Secretariat of the Committee for Development Policy (CDP) travelled to Dhaka from 9 to 12 October to discuss the country’s potential graduation from the least developed country (LDC) category. The Secretariat of the CDP met with officials from various Ministries (Finance, Planning, Foreign Affairs), the Bureau of Statistics and the Prime Minister’s Office, as well as with representatives from the private sector (Chamber of Commerce and the garments association) and the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a research institute focusing on LDC-related issues. The objective of the meetings was to explain the graduation process, the criteria for graduation, as well as a detailed review of the data used in the analysis of Bangladesh’s LDC status.

According to its preliminary calculations, the CDP Secretariat confirmed that Bangladesh will, for the first time, meet the criteria for graduation during the CDP’s triennial review of the LDCs in March 2018. Therefore,  the country could be recommended for graduation at the following triennial review in 2021. The meetings also offered an opportunity to introduce public and private sector representatives to the capacity development work undertaken by the CDP Secretariat related to LDC-specific international support measures and a new graduation platform developed by the Secretariat to assist graduating countries in better understanding the graduation process and plan for a smooth this transition from the category.

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