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Least Developed Countries Reports (the series from 1996):
2008
- Growth, Poverty and the Terms of Development
Partnership
The Report argues that the achievement of a more sustainable and inclusive
type of economic growth requires effective national development strategies,
which are supported by effective development aid and development-friendly
international regimes for trade, investment and technology. Enhanced country
ownership of national development strategies is critical for development and aid
effectiveness. In order to reach these aims, LDCs are advised to implement aid
management policies. These policies will allow aid to be more effective,
providing a more powerful contribution to development. The proposals are
critical to enhancing aid effectiveness and making the scale-up of aid work.
They link to the assessment of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness,
adopted in March 2005, which will take place in Accra, Ghana, in September
2008.
2007
- Knowledge, Technological Learning and
Innovation for Development
The Report shows that the current pattern of technology flows to LDCs through
international trade, foreign direct investment and intellectual property
licensing does not contribute to narrowing the knowledge divide. Sustained
economic growth and poverty reduction are not likely to take place in countries
where viable economic re-specialization would remain impossible in the absence
of significant progress in technological learning and innovation
capacity-building.
The Report suggests that national governments and development partners could
meet this challenge, notably through greater attention to the following four key
policy issues:
-- How science, technology and innovation policies geared toward technological
catch-up can be integrated into the development and poverty reduction strategies
of LDCs.
-- How stringent intellectual property regimes internationally affect
technological development processes in LDCs, and how appropriate policies could
improve the learning environment in these countries.
-- How the massive loss of skilled human resources through emigration could be
prevented.
-- How knowledge aid (as part of official development assistance) could be used
to support learning and innovation in LDCs.
The Report is the first comprehensive insight into the development objective
of technological learning and innovation capacity-building in LDCs. It is
intended to increase awareness of this issue and enrich the policy dialogue
toward the new "paradigm shift" on poverty reduction through productive
capacity-building.
2006
- Developing Productive Capacities
For the LDCs as a group, the decade 2000-2010 is going to be the first decade
in which the growth of the economically active population outside agriculture is
predicted to be greater than the growth of the economically active population
within agriculture. This transition will affect more than half the LDCs during
the decade and most of the others in the decade 2010-2020. Substantial poverty
reduction in the LDCs will thus require not simply increased agricultural
productivity, but also the development of competitive businesses in
manufacturing and services, as well as increased dynamic inter-sectoral
linkages.
The Report calls for a paradigm shift from a consumption- and
exchange-oriented approach to poverty reduction towards a production- and
employment-oriented approach. It analyzes three basic constraints on the
development of productive capacities in the LDCs -- poor physical
infrastructure; weaknesses of the domestic private sector and supporting
financial systems and knowledge systems; and insufficient demand and thus
underutilization of domestic resources and capabilities as well as weak
incentives to invest and innovate -- and it identifies some key policy
priorities to overcome these constraints, including the mobilization of
underutilized domestic potentials and a re-balancing of the sectoral allocation
of aid.
2004
- Linking International Trade with Poverty
Reduction
If past trends persist, LDCs are likely to become the main locus of extreme
poverty in the world economy by 2015. A more effective link between
international trade and poverty reduction could help to prevent this from
happening. Action is required now on three fronts: mainstreaming of trade and
development concerns within national poverty reduction strategies; increasing
international financial and technical assistance to enhance domestic production
and trade capacities; and promoting a more favourable international trade
regime. The latter includes:
-- phasing out by OECD countries of agricultural support measures that
adversely affect LDCs,
-- new international policies to reduce vulnerability to negative commodity
price shocks and to address the special challenges facing mineral economies,
more effective market access preferences for LDCs, complemented by
supply-side preferences, and
-- enhanced South-South cooperation in the field of trade and investment.
2002
- Escaping the Poverty Trap
With improved national and international policies, LDCs can escape the
poverty trap. Indeed a central message of the Report is that there is a
major, but currently underestimated, opportunity for rapid reduction in extreme
poverty in the LDCs through sustained economic growth. However, the new Poverty
Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), which are currently the focus of national and
international efforts to reduce poverty in poor countries, are not grasping that
opportunity. The Report proposes an alternative approach to improve the
design of poverty reduction strategies. It also shows that effective poverty
reduction in the LDCs needs a more supportive international environment. This
should include increased and more effective aid and debt relief, a review and
recasting of international commodity policy, and policies which recognize the
interdependence between the socio-economic marginalization of the poorest
countries and the increasing polarization of the global economy.
2000
- Aid, Private Capital Flows and External Debt.
The challenge of financing development in the LDCs
In order to facilitate discussions at UNLDC III, the Report
discusses the scale of the development finance challenge in LDCs, the scope for
meeting this challenge through domestic resource mobilization, and the
constraints which are limiting the LDCs´ access to international capital markets
and attractiveness for FDI. From the analysis, two key features of the
development financing patterns of LDCs emerge. First, the central accumulation
and budgetary processes of the LDCs are dominated by external rather than
domestically generated resources. Second, almost all the external finance for
most LDCs comes from official sources. The development prospects of most LDCs
thus still depend critically on aid relationships and associated external debt
dynamics. The Report examines how these have been working in the 1990s
and whether the current rethinking of international development cooperation is
likely to rectify the deficiencies of the past.
The main analytical conclusion of the Report is that the current
diagnosis for change which is shaping the new approach to international
cooperation is flawed in several crucial respects.
1999
- Marginalization, Productive Capacities and the
LDCs
The Report makes recommendations on how to improve productive
capacities and competitiveness in LDCs through appropriate domestic policy
measures to enhance the structural transformation of the economies of these
countries and the international support measures required to complement national
efforts. Policy issues for enhancing productive capacities and promoting
competitiveness in LDCs are analysed from a cross-sectoral perspective.
The Report argues that public policy in LDCs has a pivotal role in
this regard. Macroeconomic policies, in particular their stability and
predictability, are critical in this respect, but sectoral and micro, or
firm-level, policies are also necessary to facilitate the development of and
sustain the competitiveness of productive capacity in specific sectors,
industries and firms. In addition, LDC governments have to provide an enabling
environment to foster private sector development. To nurture and sustain dynamic
comparative advantage, there is a need for an integrating process that involve
the formulation and implementation of government policy linked to actions by
private enterprise and other institutions.
In the area of international support measures, the Report advocates
for increased ODA, broader, deeper and faster debt relief and technical
assistance. It argues that, with ODA accounting for up to 70 per cent of LDCs´
development budgets, these countries cannot by themselves address the structural
weaknesses that undermine their productive capacities and competitiveness.
The Report is intended for a broad readership of governments, policy-makers,
researchers and all those involved with development policy in general and LDCs
in particular.
The Report includes a statistical annex, which provides basic data on the
LDCs.
1998
- Trade, Investment and the Multilateral Trading
System
The main focus of The Least Developed Countries, 1998
Report, is an analysis of how different aspects of the multilateral
trading system affect opportunities and constraints for least developed
countries (LDCs) to enhance their participation in the world economy. The
Report also examines the evolving interface between trade issues and
the development objectives of LDCs. It analyses, in particular, several aspects
of the multilateral trading system which traditionally have not been the main
focus of concern for LDCs, but which are rapidly becoming important as these
countries attempt to diversify their economies and enhance their involvement in
the global economy. These issues include the extension of the multilateral
framework to cover trade and the environment, and trade in services.
The Report focuses on two other issues: the implementation of WTO
agreements by LDCs and how implementation by the developed countries is likely
to affect LDCs, and how the process of accession could be expedited for the 19
LDCs which are not members of WTO while ensuring that they enjoy the same rights
and concessions as current LDC members. The Report also identifies
areas where specific concessions and provisions in multilateral agreements may
be beneficial to LDCs and areas in which LDCs should develop a proactive agenda
which systematically puts forward their concerns and interests in the global
trading system.
1997
- Agricultural Development and Policy Reforms in
LDCs
UNCTAD´s annual report on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is the most
comprehensive, and authoritative, source of socio-economic analysis and data on
the world s 48 most impoverished nations.
This year, it raises the following important questions:
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Why, at a time of record resource flows to developing countries, is the LDC s
share of external finance falling?
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Why, twenty years after the Green Revolution, have many LDCs failed to
improve their agricultural productivity?
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Why, at a time of unparalleled prosperity, are the populations of nearly half
the LDCs getting less to eat than ten years ago?
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What can the international community do to help those LDCs that have
experienced serious civil strife for over a decade, and whose economies are in
regress?
1996
- Selected Issues in the Context of
Interdependence
The Least Developed Countries, 1996 Report, is the twelfth
annual report of UNCTAD focusing the attention of the international community on
the key developmental issues confronting the Least Developed Countries (LDCs),
which are the poorest and economically weakest of the developing countries with
the most formidable structural problems.
The Report reviews recent developments in the LDCs, their short-term
outlook and prospects for growth. It analyses selected issues in the context of
interdependence, examining the implications for LDCs of the processes of
globalization and liberalization, processes that have profound implications for
LDCs in terms of their position in the world economy, their development
prospects and the nature of their economic policies. It presents a set of
national policies and international support measures to enhance the capacity of
LDCs to benefit from globalization and liberalization. It also deals with
related issues in trade and economic cooperation between LDCs and other
developing countries and financial sector reform in LDCs.
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