“The 1st meeting on the organization and movement of NTMs working group and the outcome of the implementation” was organized on 11th November 2016 at Mercure Hotel in Vientiane Capital, by Department of Import and Export; financed by the Second Trade Facility Project (TDF2). The meeting was chaired by Mrs. Banesaty Thephavong, Director General of Department of Import and Export, Deputy Head of Trade Facilitation Secretariat, Ministry of Industry and Commerce and was participated by 50 NTMs focal points.
The objective of this meeting is to notify the Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) focal points on the official establishment of NTMs Working Group and is also a workshop to raise awareness on the Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) in which NTMs team presented the assessment of vehicles and fuel as a pilot assessment.
Department of Import and Export (DIMEX), Ministry of Industry and Commerce as an office to implement NTMs has been implemented NTMs work for more than three years. It has successfully completed numbers of activities especially trainings, workshops, including discussion and exchanging of information with ASEAN countries on the implementation of NTMs. However, the jointly implementation between DIMEX and relevant government agencies are still not effective enough due to the lack of regulation for the implementation. Sometimes, the government agencies did not assign NTMs focal point to join NTMs meeting which caused discontinuity for the workflow and as a result made it unable to accomplish NTMs’goals.
The current NTMs working group is established under the Decision of Minister of Industry and Commerce on the Organization and Obligation of the Non-Tariff Measures no. 1558/MOIC, dated 31 August 2016 which is one of the Trade Facilitation Secretariat’s working groups and it clearly specifies rights and responsibilities of the NTMs working group. One of significant tasks that NTMs working group will need to work on is the Regulatory Impact Assessment with sectors and then submit to the Trade Facilitation Secretariat for approval.
Mrs. Banesaty Thephavong stated “Department of Import and Export had already implemented the Regulatory Impact Assessment for products governed by the department. It consists of vehicles and fuel that we assessed by analyzing facts of consumption, costs, time and benefits of issuing import license, and comments from private sector to improve measures in order to achieve explicit outcome. Moreover, Department of Import and Export also shorten import licensing procedures in compliance with Lao National Single Window (LNSW) which is one of the ways to improve NTMs. At present, Department of Import and Export had issued 43 licenses through the LNSW system but we still need to review and revise it forward completely compact and simple system or to turn manual system into paperless (automation) services”.
The meeting was proceeded according to its agenda. The morning session was the first meeting of the NTMs working group that illustrate roles, obligations, responsibilities, and scope of its work. The participants acknowledged the presentation about generality and outcome on the implementation of NTMs by Department of Import and Export. In the afternoon, the meeting had trained NTMs focal points on the NTMs’ Regulatory Impact Assessment and had presented the result of Regulatory Impact Assessment for vehicles and fuel import licensing by the NTMs expert. Lastly, the meeting was opened for discussion on plans and priorities for the Regulatory Impact Assessment.
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