LDCs meet to improve productive capacities of the poorest countries

Making the array of the goods and services a country produces broader and more sophisticated creates higher-paying jobs and improves living standards of citizens.
What can be done to help the planet’s 49 poorest nations improve their productive capacities will be the subject of an UNCTAD-sponsored meeting held from October 27-29 in Geneva , Switzerland.
The gathering is one of series of 'pre-events' staged by various United Nations (UN) agencies and intended to channel ideas and momentum into the Fourth United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) to be held in Turkey from May 30 to June 3, 2011.
The meeting's theme 'Building productive capacities in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) for inclusive and sustainable development' reflects UNCTAD's research and policy advice that poverty is most extensively and sustainably reduced through broad economic progress. UNCTAD economists say that the impact of the global recession on LDCs has made such balanced growth more essential than ever – indeed, today the LDC group has twice as many members as it did in 1997. An additional factor that undoubtedly contributed to this increase are the missed opportunities to improve economic specialisation, make sufficient infrastructural investment, and develop science and technology capacities.
Participants will examine how the focus on developing productive capacities affects the design of national policies to promote development and poverty reduction in LDCs, as well as the design of international support measures for LDCs by their development partners. They will review government policies and international technical and financial assistance measures that can help LDCs modernise their economies, strengthen institutional capacities, better benefit from global trade in goods and services, and make use of science, technology and innovation (STI) for economic development.
An area of focus will also be measures for attracting increased domestic and foreign investment of the sort that leads to widespread job creation and more value added in goods and services produced, so that salaries are higher and are spent domestically, thus spurring greater economic demand and the creation of still more jobs. LDCs are characterised by high levels of poverty, including extreme poverty; by health problems such as high rates of malnutrition; and by economies that are heavily dependent on basic agriculture and on the export of basic commodities and raw materials.
UNCTAD has long maintained that durable progress in these countries requires structural transformation of their economies so that commodities exports -- which often bring limited economic benefits and are subject to pronounced price swings -- are supplemented by industry and services that create and sustain domestic demand and enable LDCs to compete more effectively in international markets.
A basic aim of the pre-event will be to contribute to building political consensus and analytical basis for thinking about a new generation of international support measures for LDC which focus on the development of productive capacities. Such measures should dovetail with national policies and work more effectively to achieve sustained growth, productive employment generation and poverty reduction.