This rapid assessment provides a brief account on the outcome of the Hong Kong Ministerial. The rhetoric of a special development package for the LDCs was aired in Hong Kong, and was told that, for sure, this Ministerial delivered on the promise of market access. The second part of the report examines the claim and contains an illustrative exercise that analyses the effectiveness of the deal by taking exportables of a single country to a single country market. Given the scenario, clearly, the country in question would not have much benefit from the availed market access as her exports concentrated mainly on few products and very limited number of destinations. Apprehension is that many of the products under different tariff lines, in which she has export interests might be excluded from the market access - at least the US proclamation portends of such apprehension. The country could reap some benefit if she is capable enough to bargain with her bilateral counterparts to avail such facilities for some of the particular products, if not all, in which she has particular export interests. However, this requires a lot of ground work and, of course, it is inevitable to upgrade her negotiation skills. The final part of the report, thus, ends with some recommendations for the internal reflection and elements of strategy the LDCs may choose for their onward journey.

A four-member team of Unnayan Onneshan – Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, Jakir Hossain, M Nazrul Islam and M Iqbal Ahmed - attended the Hong Kong Ministerial conference. The team closely monitored the entire negotiation process. The observations and the insights gathered were disseminated through six numbers of LDC Trade and Development Perspective, which were also circulated in people’s congregations at the Victoria Park as well as to negotiators, media and NGOs in Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). The LDC Trade and Development Perspective bulletin was jointly published by the Unnayan Onneshan and Third World Media Network (TWMN). The web versions of the Perspective were uploaded on a day-to-day basis and are available at http://www.unnayan.org/

Besides, the organisation arranged three discussion meetings at the NGO Centre in HKCEC during December 15 and 17 in the sideline of the Ministerial conference to create awareness on the concerns of LDCs among the government delegates, members from civil society, journalists, NGO activists from different countries of the world.

The activities are sequel to the organisation’s programme, “Trade Negotiations and the Livelihood of the People.” The organisation also held a two-day long “People’s Solidarity Forum for Fair Trade” which was held on 2 - 3 December 2005 in Dhaka. The event was co-organised by 10 civil society organisations (CSOs) and Networks and also adopted Dhaka Declaration. The research centre also organised numerous national and regional seminars and consultation meetings in collaboration with universities and CSOs.

First Issue - December 13, 2005
Second Issue - December 14, 2005
Part-I
Part-II
Third Issue - December 15, 2005
Fourth Issue - December 16, 2005
Fifth Issue - December 17, 2005
Sixth Issue - December 18, 2005