Recently, at the United Nations Least Developed Countries (LDC) Summit that concluded on March 9 in Doha, Qatar, the landlocked Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan will no longer be on the list of LDCs and will become only the seventh country to graduate from the list.
Bhutan was included in the first group of LDCs in 1971. However, over the last few decades, it has made remarkable progress on a variety of socio-economic metrics.
Bhutan first fulfilled the requirements for graduation in 2015, and then again in 2018. Bhutan was therefore scheduled to graduate in 2021. However, the UN viewed Bhutan’s request to match the effective graduation date with the conclusion of the nation’s 12th national development plan in 2023 as a legitimate request and thus postponed the delisting.