Mr. Viengsavanh Siphanhdone, Director General of Transportation Department spoke at the Dissemination Meeting on the Effects of Laos PDR entering AEC on Transportation and Logistics that: previously JICA researched and created master plan of Lao logistic resulting that regional integration will increase large quantity of transportation, including import-export and goods transit through border which will be a good opportunity to Lao transport and logistics entrepreneurs. In order to build Lao PDR as a sufficient transit country, private sectors are require to have strength for competition and to gain benefits from the liberal movement of goods, service, investment, finance and labor of joining same market and manufacturing base.
Mr. Hatmout Yannouse, Director of ASEAN Economic Integration Plan of Lao PDR for business and commerce development Project stated that transportation is highly important for Laos to enter AEC, but Lao transportation and logistics is not strong enough to support goods carriers from neighboring countries to Laos and forwarding to the third countries, especially main roads those link to neighbor countries.
Mr. Paul Aptop, Consultant of Mekong Sub Regional Transportation, summarized the research result on the Effects of Laos PDR entering AEC on Transportation and Logistics that domestic goods transportation is plenty, but most goods transit are foreign companies that invest or open branch for transporting minerals, instant products, timber, and others. This would not bring enough benefits to the government, and the Lao entrepreneurs also lose benefits of international goods transit.
Consequently, the research result shown that transportation companies in Laos still lack of professional human resource for example: technician, driver, service and others. Comparing to other ASEAN countries is in low conditions. Hence, in order gain benefit from entering AEC, it is necessary to organize trainings for those staffs, including transportation companies to strengthen their capacity to transit goods to overseas especially Thailand, Vietnam, China, or other countries. If the company hire foreign stuff, it will cost triple times of labor cost of Lao staffs or the Lao transportation isn’t stable.
However, the Director General added that to resolve these issues, the Transportation Department has amended and issued numbers of laws in consistent with ASEAN framework, mainly Land Transportation Law and Land Traffic Law. Laos have learnt a lot from the past, but we still have difficulty on carrying huge budget to sustain infrastructures of communication–transportation, in which compares to benefits is not enough.
Source: Lao Economic Daily
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