The Least Developed Countries Report 2025: Are Services the New Path to Structural Transformation?

The Trade and Development Board

1. Welcomes The Least Developed Countries Report 2025: Are Services the New Path to Structural Transformation?, and appreciates the comprehensive analysis and policy discussions contained within the report;
2. Acknowledges that services are increasingly vital for employment and value creation in the least developed countries, and emphasizes the role of services production and exports in the modernization of the economies, enhancement of productive capacities and unlocking of new development potential of the least developed countries;
3. Notes with high concern the persistence of low productivity and informality across significant segments of the services sector, in addition to the limited share of services delivered digitally in the least developed countries, which constrains the developmental contribution of the sector;
4. Emphasizes the necessity of addressing structural challenges that confront the services sector in the least developed countries, regarding productivity, intersectoral linkages, knowledge intensity and informality, which can only be achieved when supported by coherent national strategies and a conducive global environment, to enable services-driven development and economic transformation;
5. Recognizes the specific vulnerabilities of graduating and recently graduated least developed countries, which emanate from the gradual loss of international support measures, and the need to provide support with regard to productive, knowledge-intensive and digitally enabled services to support structural transformation, enhance competitiveness and ensure smooth, sustainable and irreversible graduation;
6. Underscores the growing significance of knowledge-intensive and digitally deliverable services in global trade, and points out with concern the marginal role played by the least developed countries in these most dynamic segments of trade in services;
7. Expresses concern regarding the concentrated services exports and markets of the least developed countries, as well as the substantial barriers the least developed countries face in technology, digital trade, market access and investment, which limit the potential of these countries to diversify into modern services and to reduce their vulnerability to external economic shocks;
8. Emphasizes the imperative for the least developed countries to address deficiencies in physical infrastructure for telecommunications and information and communications technology services, along with limitations in institutional, regulatory and policy capacities, to leverage opportunities within the digital economy;
9. Encourages the least developed countries, with a view to increasing the ability of the least developed countries to leverage evidence-based policymaking, to strengthen their capacity for data collection, including data related to trade in services, with the assistance of UNCTAD in this area;
10. Encourages the least developed countries to capitalize on bilateral engagements and on regional and continental initiatives, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, to: (a) develop regional infrastructure, including digital and transport networks (for example, through development corridors); (b) establish regional digital platforms and payment systems; and (c) pursue mutual recognition of qualifications to facilitate the mobility of professionals;
11. Underscores the urgent need for the effective operationalization and implementation of existing commitments and special preferences related to services in favour of the least developed countries, including the provision of the services waiver of the World Trade Organization, technical assistance and capacity-building, and the progressive liberalization of trade in services, particularly mode 4;
12. Requests that the UNCTAD secretariat play an active role in the preparatory process and the execution of the midterm review of the Doha Programme of Action, by sharing its accumulated knowledge and experience from its research and technical assistance initiatives on the least developed countries and on services, to expedite progress towards the goals of the Programme;
13. Invites donor countries, and other countries in a position to do so, to contribute to the replenishment of the UNCTAD trust fund for the least developed countries and the Trust Fund on Services, Development and Trade;
14. Calls upon UNCTAD to strengthen support to the least developed countries, through the effective operationalization of the deliverables related to the least developed countries in the Geneva Consensus (TD/561/Add.2), including the graduation support programme, in a manner that enables the least developed countries to effectively leverage the services sector.