The United Nations has announced that Bangladesh has attained the graduation criteria to be a developing nation from a least developed one where the country remained stuck for the past 43 years. The announcement came on March 16 on completion of review of the LDC category by the UN Committee for Development Policy in New York. According to a statement from Bangladesh’s permanent mission in the UN on Friday, the country met all three criteria — per capita Gross National Income, Human Asset Index and Economic Vulnerability Index — needed for a successful review by the UNCDP held on March 15-16. Bangladesh’s per capita GNI is $1,610, well above the current UNCPD threshold of $1,230. The country’s HAI is 72.9 against the threshold was 66 and EVI is 24.8 against the threshold of 32. According to experts, the UN recognition would allow the country to start graduating from the LDC category and would have to qualify two more reviews in 2021 and 2024 by the same UN committee to get out of the LDC list. The UN named Bangladesh a LDC in 1975. Permanent representative of Bangladesh to the UN Masud Bin Momen, who received the official recognition from Roland Mollerus, chief of secretariat of the Committee for Development Policy, at a ceremony at Bangabandhu Auditorium of Bangladesh Mission in New York described the event as historic. ‘I am delighted to inform that Bangladesh has fulfilled the criteria for graduation from the LDC category for the first time,’ he said. Momen said the government had set a goal to complete graduation as a developing country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041. High representative for the LDC, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States Fekitamoeloa Katoa ‘Utoikamanu of Tonga, chair of CDP Expert Group professor Jose Antonio Ocampo Gaviria, permanent representative of Belgium to the UN Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve, permanent representative of Turkey to the UN Feridun Hadi Sinirlioǧlu, assistant secretary general and director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and Pacific of UNDP Haoliang Xu, and director of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office Dr Selim Jahan attended the event. CDP chief Mollerus observed that the impressive successes of Bangladesh in GNI, HAI and EVI made their work easier while reviewing its status. Chair of CDP Expert Group Gaviria said that Bangladesh had an impressive history of success as it had a very dynamic export sector, human asset and significant improvement in education and health sectors. The UN recognition came three years after the World Bank announced in 2015 that Bangladesh became a lower-middle income nation as the country’s per capita GNI rose to $1,314 from $1,190 in that year. The number of LDC has grown to 47 now from 17 in 1971. Five countries have so far graduated successfully from the LDC status. They are Botswana, Cape Verde, the Maldives, Samoa and Equatorial Guinea. The UN reviewed indicators like inequality, employment, private investment and efficiency of quality expenditure in the reviews.