About the product
The development path a least developed country (LDC) follows to achieve the eligibility criteria for graduation has important implications for the challenges and vulnerabilities they face after graduation, as well as the means they have at their disposal to address them. The dynamics that drive LDCs to achieve graduation also impact their performance on graduation. UNCTAD maintains that a country’s development process continues indefinitely beyond graduation, and its subsequent success critically depends on the foundations it was able to build during graduation. How graduation is achieved is thus as important as when it is achieved. This publication recommends LDCs to adopt a Strategy for Graduation with Momentum (SGM) based on three important elements: expanding productive capacities; fostering structural transformation; and catching-up with ODCs. A starting point for strategies based on this framework is the development of productive capacities which determine both the depth of the structural transformation that a country can achieve, as well as the prospect for catch-up.
