Twenty delegations from various ministries of the Kingdom of Bhutan led by Ministry of Economic Affairs and accompanied by World Bank team had visited Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Lao PDR, Department of Import and Export led by Mrs. Manivone Vongxay, Deputy Director General of the Department to learn from Lao PDR’s experiences on the establishment of TFS and LTP. The study visit was held on 6 June 2016.
The purpose of this visit is to learn from Lao PDR’s experiences on: (1) The establishment of the Trade Facilitation Secretariat (TFS) The Department of Import and Export presented to the delegations about background, structure, secretariat members, responsibilities and coordination mechanism of the TFS, and (2) The establishment of the Lao PDR Trade Portal, the presentation of which focused on ideal structure, data collection, operation, technical issues, the management and sustainability of the portal.
One of the achievements of the Lao PDR’s trade facilitation is to provide easy access to trade information which helps in shortening time and cutting cost for traders. LTP is an important instrument which become well-known by both local and foreign users. Furthermore, the Lao government granted source code of LTP’s website to Myanmar in 2015 and Lesotho in 2013 in corresponding to their official requests.
The study visit was proceeded in dynamic atmosphere. The Bhutan delegations raised many questions to gain more understandings that would be beneficial to Bhutan to preparing for the establishment of their TFS and trade portal in the near future.
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