"The UN Secretary-General commended Bangladesh for its development in different sectors and humanity…. he thanked the Prime Minister for achieving a development of miracle," said Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen.
The Foreign Minister was briefing reporters after a bilateral meeting held between Sheikh Hasina and António Guterres at the UN Secretariat Building in New York.
As the Bangladesh Prime Minister arrived at the meeting venue, the UN Secretary-General said, "Welcome to your home."
He said both the UN and Bangladesh shared common priorities in different areas, including climate, financing and SDGs. "We share common priorities. Whether it's climate, financing and SDGs. Those priorities in the UN are also the priorities of Bangladesh," Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations Rabab Fatima, who was at the briefing, quoted António Guterres as saying.
Background
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the 76th UN General Assembly in September 2021, the first held in person since the pandemic. Bangladesh's case for the "miracle" label rested on numbers the UN itself had certified: per-capita income above $2,000, life expectancy of 72 years, and, earlier that year, the Committee for Development Policy's recommendation that the country graduate from the least-developed-country category.
Why the label stuck
"Development miracle" became a phrase Bangladesh's government used for the next three years, and its critics used against it. Growth of 6 to 7 per cent a year, garment exports second only to China's, and remittances of more than $20 billion a year supported the claim; the 2022 dollar crunch, inflation above 9 per cent, and the $4.7 billion IMF loan agreed in January 2023 showed how much of the miracle rested on imported energy and cheap credit. Since 2024 the interim government's white paper on the economy has argued that some of the growth figures behind the praise were overstated.
What happened next
Updated September 2026. Two months later, in November 2021, the UN General Assembly formally approved Bangladesh's graduation from LDC status, with a five-year preparation period ending in November 2026, which is now weeks away; graduation ends duty-free access to several export markets and is the main economic policy question of this year. Sheikh Hasina left office in August 2024 following the student-led uprising, and the interim government that followed asked the UN for a review of the graduation timetable. António Guterres visited Bangladesh in March 2025, spending Ramadan with Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar.
