麻豆APP

"From the start of the twenty-first century, the discourse on development has increasingly emphasized services as the main leverage for developing countries – including least developed countries (LDCs) – to accelerate their growth and development. It holds that a focus on strengthening different services sectors and expanding their exports allows LDCs to transform the structure of their economies, modernize their productive activities, accelerate economic growth, and thereby achieve considerably higher levels of well-being. Such reasoning has intensified, especially with the expansion of the digital economy. In this discourse, services are presented as an alternative to the traditional route of industrialization-led development and structural transformation. A major objection to this development approach is that it often takes developments in advanced economies and transfers them to LDCs. It fails to take into account the actual structural challenges that beset the services sector of LDCs in terms of productivity, knowledge intensity, informality and sluggishness, which are reflected in the patterns of these countries’ foreign trade in services. The Least Developed Countries Report 2025: Are services the new path to structural transformation? provides an in-depth analysis of the actual situation of the tertiary sector of LDCs and their trade in services, to critically assess the applicability of such new development reasoning to these countries. It offers an evidence-based approach to the complementary role that services can play in the structural transformation of LDCs."