Even as Bangladesh is set to join the big league of developing nations in a few years’ time making the transition from an LDC, which would shorn the country of trade privileges that it currently enjoys, which might impact its exports including the all-important apparel shipments, experts have urged the Government to do its homework and prepare for any post-graduation challenges that the country may face in the wake of the transition.
The experts came up with the observations while discussing the benefits and challenges of graduation in a webinar titled, ‘Bangladesh’s Transition to Developing Country – Biggest Milestone in Her Development Journey’, organised by the Canadian University of Bangladesh recently, adding the LDC graduation is a great achievement for Bangladesh but underlined that preparations need to be made from now on to make sure that Bangladesh is able to overcome the challenges that might present in the wake of the transition, so that the country need not apply for a further extension of the transition period.
Underscoring the need to ensure smooth and sustainable graduation, the participants at the webinar, reportedly, maintained it would be embarrassing to appeal for more time to make the transition even as it has been learnt that the UN Committee on Development Policy, in the last week of February, gave a final recommendation on the Bangladesh’s graduation to a developing nation — as per the committee’s guidelines, Bangladesh was supposed to leave the LDC group in 2024, but the Government sought to extend the transition period by two years due to the economic fallouts of the coronavirus pandemic — whilst the Executive Director of the Policy Research Institute Ahsan H. Mansur, taking part in the discussion, reportedly, said that the graduation is not any single person’s achievement; rather it is an achievement for the whole country.
