The Trade and Private Sector Working Group meeting advances government, development partners, and private sector cooperation
By sonsathit rasavong On 16 Oct, 2014 At 08:35 AM | Categorized As Top | With 0 Comments

 

The sixth Trade and Private Sector Working Group meeting was held on October 15 to discuss key achievements of past year and key investment climate constraints hindering growth of manufacturing and service sectors in Laos.

The half-day meeting, which was organized by the MoIC, in collaboration with development partners and the business community, drew more than more than 100 participants from Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Line Ministries, development partners and donors.

During the meeting, H.E. Mrs. Khemmani Pholsena, Minister of Industry and Commerce who chaired the meeting with H.E. Michael Grau, German Ambassador Designate and Mr. Michel Goffin, Charge d’ Affairs, European Union, spoke about the need to promote non-resource sectors as strategy to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth. “Boom in natural resource exploitation has brought significant benefits to the Lao economy in the form of higher economic growth, an increase in fiscal revenues, infrastructure improvements, and improvements in environmental legislation and institutions.

At the same time, an overreliance on the resource sector as the source of growth in the economy poses serious risks to the long term sustainability of development in Lao PDR. In this regard, the focus of our trade and private sector development program was to facilitate a shift more to non-resource sectors in which: a) long term and competitive growth potential exists, b) large proportion of poor is engaged and c) where there is scope for market development interventions.”

Mr. Michel Goffin, EU Chargé d’Affaires reiterates the importance of financial support committed by Development Partners to help Laos to strengthen its trade and private sector development priority. It is estimated that about 50 million USD is committed for a period of 2012-2018 to finance the costs of technical assistance to support the government agencies to review relevant policy, develop legislations, set up information systems and technical implementation units complied with WTO and ASEAN requirements; and provide direct financial and technical supports to SMEs e.g. access to credit, matching grants, business advisory.  In this regard, Mr. Goffin stresses the need to use the assistance effectively to maximise the impacts for private sector development which is a key factor for economic diversification and sustainable economic growth.

The meeting also discussed the sector working group’s inputs to the upcoming Round Table Implementation Meeting, concept for preparation of the next 5 year sector development plan, key findings and recommendations of the enterprise perception survey, and the trade and transport facilitation assessment presented by GIZ and the World Bank, respectively.

The TPSWG is one of ten sector working groups under the Round Table Process and is the main forum for policy dialogue between the Government of Lao PDR and Development Partners. Participants of the forum usually come from Government, Development Partners, the private sector, and civil society. Other 9 sector working groups include Health; Education; Governance; Macroeconomics; Infrastructure; Illicit Drug Control; UXO; Agriculture and Rural Development; and Natural Resource and Environmental Management.

[Picture and Detail from National Implementation Unit, Department of Planning and Cooperation, Ministry of Industry and Commerce]