Ministerial Conference of LDC in New Delhi

Government of India is organizing a Ministerial Conference of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in New Delhi on February 18-19, 2011. 

Foreign Ministers of all the 48 LDCs and their Permanent Representatives (PRs) to the United Nations in New York have been invited to the event.  All the PRs and about thirty five Ministers will be participating in the Conference.

The importance of the India-LDC Conference emanates from the following acts-(i) LDCs comprise the most vulnerable section of the global community. Their number has gone up from 25 in 1971 to 48 in 2011 which is a matter of great concern. (ii) Sustained global growth and stability will remain a dream if economies of the LDCs continue to be underdeveloped and their natural and human resources remain untapped preventing their overall socio-economic advancement. (iii) In recent times, South-South cooperation has come to be recognized as a powerful instrument in facilitating the process of capacity building, institutional and physical infrastructure within the South which includes every LDC.

It may be mentioned that besides multilateral channels, India has also got its own national instruments of mutually beneficial cooperation that are in the forefront of assisting the LDCs - (i) Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme (ITEC); (ii) Duty Free, Quota Free (DFQF) regime for LDC’s exports to India, (iii) Africa E-connectivity Project and (iv) Government of India’s credit line Programme.