The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE least developed countries (LDCs), a category to which Bangladesh belongs, are not always expecting increased developmental assistance from donor countries and organisations to beter their lot economically. They are more keen, as in the case of Bangladesh, in beter terms of trade from the developed countries to help them to overcome their problems. Adverse conditions in markets of developed countries are often found to be detrimental to the efforts of the LDCs to increase their export income. Such increases in export have clear linkages with poverty reduction. Stepped up export activities means more mobilisation of the factors of production in a poor country including added employment of workers. This can be very useful in alleviating poverty with employment and income opportunities rising. In most of the LDC countries, the external markets are limited in size. Thus, the only way for them to achieve fast economic growth is to substantially expand their production activities with an eye for the external markets and these markets are mainly in the developed countries.

Some LDCs have been blessed with duty-free market accesses for some of their major export items to the developed countries. But this has not been the case for others. Bangladesh, for instance, has not been given duty-free entry of its main export product, ready-made garments (RMG) into its single biggest market in the USA. Therefore, the LDCs are waiting to be benefited from further promotional activities on the part of the rich countries for market access of their products. Market access conditions can improve not only from declaring concessions in the areas of tariffs; practical supports extended to the poor countries in the form of technical and advisory services to them can also be of much value in augmenting their export activities. LDCs generally are in need of developing production and trade capacities in the very competitive international trade environment There is a big need to much increase such technical and advisory assistance for the creation of greater capacities within the LDCs to export more.

It was observed in the Shanghai conference on poverty alleviation that there is a great deal of expectation from the rich countries that the poor ones ought to work harder towards the atainment of the millennium developmental goals (MDGs) that mainly require them to score beter results in downsizing poverty. But the realisation of the MDGs calls for, on the one hand, a much greater channelling of developmental assistance by the developed countries to the poor ones and substantial facilitation measures extended by them for the later on the other. It is obvious that these expectations have not been adequately fulfilled by the developed countries. While internal conditions of lack of competitiveness create hazards for the LDCs to increase exports, they are no less frustrated by practices in developed countries to impose sometimes irrational non tariff barriers based on labour and environment issues without considering their national developmental levels.