Bhutan poised to move up from UN's category of poorest countries

United tions, March 16: Famous for its pursuit of Gross tiol Happiness, Bhutan has a new cause for joy: In recognition of its Gross tiol Income (GNI) growth and social development, the kingdom is poised to graduate from the UN category of the world’s poorest known as the Least Developed Countries (LDC). However, two other South Asian tions, Nepal and Bangladesh, will continue in the LDC category although they have recorded progress, the UN panel that recommends changes to the list said Thursday.

The Committee on Development Policy (CDP) announced that it was recommending that the Himalayan kingdom was ready to move out of the LDC pool “because of its increasing tiol earning power as well as access to better health care and education”. “Bhutan is a very interesting success story of social progress and also economic progress,” CDP chair Jose Antonio Ocampo told reporters. “They have done very big investments in human development.”

Countries that are classified as LDC have preferential access to development assistance and trade but an interim arrangement spread over many years will smooth their transition when they graduate. To graduate out of the LDC list, a country has to meet two of the three criteria during two successive triennial reviews.

Bhutan met two of them, the criteria for income, with its GNI tripling between 2003 and 2018, and for the human assets index, which measures health and education, with falling under-five mortality rate and a doubling of secondary enrollment, CDP said. It did fall short in the third category that measures economic vulnerability, which Ocampo explained, was because “they are very specialised economically” dependent on electricity exports. (IANS)

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