Achieving the trade targets of Millennium Development Goal 8: Status in the least developed countries of Asia and the Pacific

This paper examines the progress made so far in achieving the trade targets of Millennium Development Goal 8 (“Building a Global Partnership for Development”) with respect to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Asia and the Pacific. The paper uses data from the OECD, WTO and UNDP, among others, to measure the MDG indicators 8.6, 8.7 and 8.9 with respect to these countries, thereby quantifying some of the impacts in these countries of recent global and national policy changes in the areas of market access, tariff preferences for LDCs and Aid for Trade. This paper concludes that while the market access commitments of the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Declaration of 2005 have largely been met and LDCs of the Asia-Pacific benefit disproportionately from Aid for Trade, the overall share of LDC exports as a part of total world exports has not increased over the past decade. In its conclusion, this paper suggests that other factors such as non-tariff barriers and product competitiveness play a significant role and should become policy priorities of better targeted Aid for Trade.