Blog: Achieving growth with structural change in LDCs: Priorities for the Doha Programme of Action, Neil Balchin, The Commonwealth

The leaders of the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs) are meeting at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on March 17th, 2022 to adopt the Doha Programme of Action (DPoA), setting a renewed agenda for development in LDCs. Practical and innovative ways to accelerate inclusive economic transformation should be at the forefront of this agenda. Despite progressively greater emphasis on building productive capacity and enabling economic diversification in the DPoA’s immediate predecessors, most LDCs made only limited headway in transforming the structure of their economies. The devastating impacts of COVID-19 on production, trade and investment in LDCs, and its wider economic and social effects, have stalled progress even further. (The two most recent programmes of action for LDCs preceding the DPoA were the Brussels Programme of Action (2000-2010) and the Istanbul Programme of Action (2011-2020).)