The UN listed 46 economies, including 33 from Africa, as the least developed countries, its trade and development body said on Tuesday.

The designation entitled them to preferential market access, aid, special technical assistance, and capacity-building on technology among other concessions, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in its 2023 report.

While a vast majority of the least developed countries belong to the African region, nine of them are from Asia, three from the Pacific and one from Caribbean region, the report said.

Only six countries have graduated from the least developed country status so far, the report revealed, namely Botswana (December 1994), Cabo Verde (December 2007), Maldives (January 2011), Samoa (January 2014), Equatorial Guinea (June 2017), and Vanuatu (December 2020).

Public debt

Debt service in the least developed countries soared to $27 billion in 2021, a staggering 37% increase from $20 billion in the preceding year, UNCTAD said.

"Today, the least developed countries are not only spending more on debt service than on either health or education – on average, they are spending almost twice as much on debt than on health."​​​​​​

"Multiple global crises, the climate emergency, growing debt burdens, dependence on commodities and declining foreign investments into the least developed countries have strained their finances, jeopardising their progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, including a low-carbon transition," the report read.

Financing requirements for the least developed countries "go far beyond climate concerns, encompassing broader economic and social challenges," the UN body noted and it called for a "lasting, multilateral" solution to the debt crisis in these countries and for the mobilisation of both the development and climate finance they require.

It also underlined the crucial role of domestic institutions, and in particular of central banks, in facilitating the mobilisation of national resources and in directing financial flows towards a green structural transformation in these countries.