The workshop was organized on 22 July 2014 at Arawan Riverside Hotel in Champasak province, joining by 70 participants from 3 provonces in the midle, and 4 provinces in the Southern of Lao PDR, such as Bolikhamxay, Khammouane, Svannakhet, Salavanh, Champasak, Xekong, and Attapue who represented the Department of Industry, Department of Finance, and Department of Agriculture and Forestry, and the provincial National Chamber and Industry Association. The workshop took one day, chaired by Ms. Banesaty Thepphavong, director general of Department of Import and Export, Ministry of Industry and Commerce.The workshop was organized on 22 July 2014 at Arawan Riverside Hotel in Champasak province, joining by 70 participants from 3 provonces in the midle, and 4 provinces in the Southern of Lao PDR, such as Bolikhamxay, Khammouane, Svannakhet, Salavanh, Champasak, Xekong, and Attapue who represented the Department of Industry, Department of Finance, and Department of Agriculture and Forestry, and the provincial National Chamber and Industry Association. The workshop took one day, chaired by Ms. Banesaty Thepphavong, director general of Department of Import and Export, Ministry of Industry and Commerce.
The purpose of this workshop is to review the implementation of Rules of Origin of Lao PDR, regulation and the ASEAN self Certification phase II in order to get ready to join the AEC in 2015. The work on Rules of Origin is on of the priority of ASEAN, which was rised to be discussed for a long time within ASEAN. Lao PDR joined the ASEAN self Certification phase II in order to reduce the capital cost of the business operators and facilitate the business shiftment to Asean market.
The workshop gave detail explaination on the Lao prefersential on trade, legal documents, and equiptment on implementation of the work on Certifying Rules of Origin (CO), step on reviewing the qualification of receiving preferential on trade and issueance of Rules of Origin, reporting the statistic of Rules of Origin and the receipts of Rules of Origin of goods, the ways to record the information of the companies which issue the Certificates of Rules of Origin into the nattion wide form, the self certification in Lao PDR under the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, and future plan of the work on Rules of Origin.
The work plan of Rules of Origin in the future, the Department of Import and Export plans to study the possibility to handle the right to issue Form A to provicial Department of Industry and Commerce around the country and the special Economic Zone, and encourage the qualified companies for self certificates of Rules of Origin to join the second ASEAN self certificate pilot to get ready on the unity implementation in ASEAN in 2015, Continue to issue the Rules of Origin ofr goods and study the possibility of submitting the certificate of Rules of Origin through electronic system.
At the same time, the workshop also discussed other issues which related to the work on import and export, and diseminated the procedure on considering the fee charge on wood in the fiscal year 2013/2014, the calculation of fee charge on wood based on the Precidential Decree on Service fee and Charge No 003/POL and the share of income from wood. It also discussed on the draft of import and export form on goods which is beeing re-edited.
For the procedure on considering fee charge on wood in fiscal of 2013/2014 listed as below:
1) Collecting information from concerned sectors, actual transation fee at the market in and out of Lao PDR, the portential of price and kind of wood.
2) Adjust the fee charge based on the information in number 1 and will consider for a suitable fee charge base on the actual situation.
3) Send the draft of fee charge to concerned sectors for comments.
4) Organize workshop within the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to review comments from concerned sectors to reconsider the fee charge.
5) Adjust the fee charge based on the agreement of the workshop of the MOIC.
6) Send the draft of fee charge to concerned sectors to comment again.
7) Finalize readjustment of fee charge base on the feedback from the concerned sectors in number 6.
8) After the completion of step #7, submit the draft of fee charge to the government for approval.
After the government considered and agreed, the governement office then issued a notification “to advise on fee charge on wood in fiscal year 2013/2014 No. 706/GOL.S, dated 28 May 2014” as a referrence for the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to issue a notification on fee charge on wood at field II and the export duty fee on wood during the fiscal year of 2013-2014 No. 0992/MOIC.DIMEX, dated 29 May 2014 for the implementation in the whole country.
The calculation of fee charge on wood was classified based on the different kinds of wood, with defferent fee charges, based on the kinds of wood and grade. The fee charge on wood was set up at field II and was divided to different formats, such as timbers for finished processing within the country, timbers for export, saw timbers for export, and transformed timbers for export. The fee charges on wood includes: 1) survey fee (before extraction, allowance stamp to cut down, after extraction); 2) fee for replantation (fee for replantation, fee for management) and 3) fee for resource.
At the workshop, all the participants showed a lot of interest to the contents of the disemination which could be seen on the attention paid by participants, exchange comments, actual experience, rising questions for unclear and not understand points, especially the regulation on issueance the Rules of Origin, the implementation of fee charge on wood in the fiscal year 2013-2014 and other issues.
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