India likely to give additional funds to LDCs

New Delhi, Feb 16 (PTI) India is expected to announceadditional financial contributions for the development ofLeast Developed Countries (LDCs) later this week when it hostsa ministerial conference here in which about 35 foreignminister from these nations will participate.

"Of the total 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), wewill be hosting 35 ministers and also about 45 permanentrepresentatives in New York for the India-LDC MinisterialConference on February 18-19," India''s permanentrepresentative to the UN Hardeep Puri told reporters here.

Asked if India would announce additional concessions toLDcs, Puri said "my expectation is yes. I think it will beonly appropriate that we allow the announcement of thoseadditional...contributions to be made at appropriate politicallevel."

He said it would be only logical to make suchannouncements as there will expectation from the countriesparticipating in the conference ''Harnessing the positivecontribution of South-South Cooperation for development of theLeast Developed Countries (LDCs)''.

Apart from LDCs, Finland, Australia, Slovenia, China,Hungary, Croatia, Georgia, European Union, the US, Germany andHungary will also attend the meeting as observers, he said.

The objective of the Conference is to provide inputs tothe 4th UN-LDC Conference to be held in Istanbul in May thisyear, which is expecting an ambitious outcome, one which wouldallow at least 50 percent of the countries to reach thethreshold of graduation by 2020. (more) PTI SAP PYK