Highlights

UNCTAD´s annual report on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is the most comprehensive, and authoritative, source of socio-economic analysis and data on the world s 48 most impoverished nations.

This year, it raises the following important questions:

• Why, at a time of record resource flows to developing countries, is the LDC s share of external finance falling?

• Why, twenty years after the Green Revolution, have many LDCs failed to improve their agricultural productivity?

• Why, at a time of unparalleled prosperity, are the populations of nearly half the LDCs getting less to eat than ten years ago?

• What can the international community do to help those LDCs that have experienced serious civil strife for over a decade, and whose economies are in regress?

The Least Developed Countries, 1997 Report, thirteenth in the series, provides thought-provoking answers to these and other questions being asked by policy-makers in many parts of the world. The Report is intended for a broad readership of governments, policy makers, researchers and all those involved with LDCs in particular and development policy in general. For that purpose, it has been redesigned and updated to make it more accessible, readable and informative. The statistical annex has been re-examined and overhauled, bearing in mind the particular constraints on the gathering and interpretation of economic and social data from LDCs.