To achieve the goal, the draft demands a binding commitment for duty-free and restriction-free market access of all products from the LDCs to the developed countries on a secure, long-term and predictable basis.

The 11-point agenda included in the draft declaration was placed yesterday for discussion by the delegations of 39 LDCs, out of the 49, attending the trade ministers' conference.

The Dhaka Declaration will be adopted tomorrow on the basis of the final draft.

The stakeholders were unanimous on the final draft during their discussion yesterday.

Bangladesh hosts the second trade ministers' meeting of the LDCs, organised mainly to take a common stand on the WTO (World Trade Oraginsation) issues ahead of its fifth ministerial meeting in September this year at Cancun in Mexico.

According to statistics with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), market share of the LDCs in global trade declined from two per cent in 1960 to one per cent in 1970. The share further declined from 0.8 per cent in 1980 to 0.4 per cent in 2001.

Export from the LDCs has been hit hard due to compliance requirements of the developed countries and their protectionist measures in the name of environment, labour and workplace standards, sources pointed out.

" Our experience of these past years has been that the global trading regime is making our developmental effort more difficult -- the potential opportunities have remained largely elusive and compliance requirements have continued to be expensive, and that only the attendant risks have been too real," observed Dr. Debapriya Bhattachariya, Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).

The WTO trade ministers' meetings at Marrakesh, Singapore, Brussels and Doha made commitments to allow duty-free market access of the LDCs' products and integrate them into the multilateral trading system.

But little has so far been done in line with those commitments, Minister for Industries and Trade of the United Republic of Tanzania Dr. Juma A Ngasongwa told The Daily Star yesterday.

" All the LDCs have to be united to uphold their legitimate interest in the global trade to enhance their share and to speed up implementation of the pledges made by the developed countries through different ministerial meetings of the WTO," he added.

Dr. Juma attends the trade ministers' conference in Dhaka.

The final draft also demands flexible rules of origin to match the industrial capacity of the LDCs.

It emphasises implementation of special and differential (S&D) treatment to reverse the continued marginalisation of the LDCs.

The final draft further demands " Free access to developed country markets for temporary movement of natural persons, particularly unskilled and semi-skilled service providers, simplifying visa procedures and without asking for economic needs test (ENT).

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The agenda contained in the draft included substantial increase in technical and financial assistance to the LDCs for development of their institutions and capacity for increasing trade. It seeks devising appropriate compensatory mechanism to offset the erosion of preference margins due to lowering of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariffs.

It further demands exemption of the LDCs' exports from anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard measures. Expeditious action for the accession of the LDCs and a permanent and legally sound solution for the LDCs have also been sought in case of difficulties in making effective use of compulsory licensing.