According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Bangladesh’s graduation from the league of least developed countries (LDCs) will have to face some challenges consequent to the transition period being impacted by the fallouts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As per the UN agency’s latest profile, notwithstanding all the positives of the past decades, some deep-seated challenges – notably the modest progress in terms of export diversification and the elusive quest for adequate sustainable development finance – continue to linger on the country’s (Bangladesh’s) sustainable development prospects.
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, these challenges are made even more formidable, threatening to leave long-lasting scars on the world economy and making the international environment less conducive, it underlined.
Underlining that despite a sharp slowdown in economic activity, Bangladesh has so far weathered the crisis relatively well and appears set to record positive GDP growth even in 2020, the UNCTAD maintained the emergence of the pandemic and the ensuing global recession had interrupted a period of rapid economic growth.
Before March 2020, UNCTAD had assessed Bangladesh’s vulnerability profile based on the pre-COVID-19 data of the economy to determine the graduation criteria.
However, the sudden onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic from March onwards, which has badly impacted the global economy as well as Bangladesh, led UNCTAD to come up with a separate vulnerable profit.
The UN body shared the findings with the Government on 10 December and, reportedly, suggested addressing some challenges during the transition period so as to ensure smooth and sustainable graduation.
