The Time Release Study of Lao PDR for year 2012 has been initially completed by the Department of Customs. The Ministry of Finance organized internal discussion meetings and also invited concerned sectors together with representatives from business sectors for presenting and discussing the results of the survey. The Time Release Study is significant for Customs and for trade facilitation. The study has clarified customs procedures at check points and the issuing of import permits from related department. The main target was to identify the difficulties in time release in order to find solutions to improve facilitation of import-export. The consulting firm EMC was employed for conducting the TRS using the questionnaire designed by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and selecting 100 survey samples from each check point for a total of 11 check points.

The result of the Time Release Study initially shows that the gross of TR for year 2012 is 11 hours and 4 minutes average, a decrease from year 2009 of 36%. The time required for customs procedure at check points decreased by 67%. Nonetheless, the period of time release shows differences where in some cases it is no more than 10 minutes whilst in other cases it can be more than 90 hours. In addition, time spent on requesting import permits from related departments has increased since 2009. From the TRS results, we learned that there are several actions that need to be taken to improve, especially service at check points such as increasing the hours of service at check points, extending the use of ACYCUDA throughout the country, improve the setting of standard indicators for risk assessment to be more accurate and realistic and improve customs procedure by synchronizing and standardizing them in order to avoid the differences in time spent for customs procedure at different check points.