Bangladesh is set to submit the Least Developed Country graduation progress report by October 31 to the United Nations Committee for Development Policy on a positive note, said a policy maker of the interim government on Monday.
The Economic Relations Division has been preparing the report after consulting with other key ministries and divisions, said special assistant for the finance ministry Anisuzzaman Chowdhury at his office at the ministry of finance.
He also said that they would review the report before sending it to the UN.
Anisuzzaman, who is looking after the LDC graduation issue on behalf of the interim government, reiterated that they had no intention to defer the country鈥檚 promotion to the higher level despite demand by a section of businesses.
Bangladesh is scheduled to graduate out of the LDC category on 24 November 2026.
On August 25, UN CDP Chair Jos茅 Antonio Ocampo asked Bangladesh in a letter to submit the progress report on its preparations for the graduation from the LDC bloc by October 31.
Based on the progress report, the UN will release the monitoring report on Bangladesh in February 2026, said the ERD official.聽聽聽聽聽聽
The UN monitoring report on Bangladesh for the current calendar year, released in the past February, said that the country has maintained decent margins above the graduation thresholds for all three LDC indicators.
Bangladesh has made further improvements in two other indicators: Gross National Income and Human Assets Index in 2024, said the monitoring report.
It is clear that Bangladesh is on the precipice of more than one transition, said the UN report.
A section of businessmen has already asked the government to defer the graduation from the LDC bloc by at least three years.
According to Debapriya Bhattacharya, a distinguished fellow of the Center for Policy Dialogue and a member of the UN CDP, the main task of the UN committee is to monitor the countries鈥� progress under its Enhanced Monitoring Mechanism programme.
The monitoring exercise enables the CDP to alert the Economic and Social Council to any signs of deterioration in the development progress of the countries concerned, he said.
Along with Bangladesh, Nepal and the Lao PDR are also scheduled to leave the LDC bloc in the next year.
In 2021, the UN allowed Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Lao PDR a five-year preparatory period until graduation -- instead of the usual three-year period --because of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
