The Least Developed Countries Report 2025: Are services the new path to structural transformation?
How do countries ‘graduate’ from least developed country status?
The list of LDCs is reviewed every three years by the Committee for Development Policy (CDP), a group of independent experts who report to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Following a triennial review of the list, the CDP may recommend to ECOSOC, countries for addition to the list or graduation from LDC status.
To graduate from the LDC category, a country must meet the established graduation thresholds of at least two of the three criteria for two consecutive triennial reviews: namely: (i) income per capita, (ii) an index of human assets, and (iii) an index of economic and environmental vulnerability.
Countries that are highly vulnerable, or have very low human assets, are eligible for graduation only if they meet the other two criteria by a sufficiently high margin. As an exception, a country whose per capita income is sustainably above the “income-only” graduation threshold, set at three times the graduation threshold, becomes eligible for graduation, even if it fails to meet the other two criteria.
The eight countries that have graduated from least developed country status since the creation of the category are:
- Botswana in December 1994
- Cabo Verde in December 2007
- Maldives in January 2011
- Samoa in January 2014
- Equatorial Guinea in June 2017
- Vanuatu in December 2020
- Bhutan in December 2023
- Sao Tome and Principe in December 2024