This year’s Doing Business report completes a two-year effort to expand benchmarks that measure the quality of regulation, as well as efficiency of the business regulatory framework, in order to better capture realities on the ground. Five indicators saw changes in this report limiting their comparability to last year’s ranking. They are 1) dealing with construction permits, 2) getting electricity, 3) enforcing contracts, 4) registering property and 5) trading across borders.

Although Lao PDR has made progress in reforming its business environment over the past years, continued improvement in other areas will play an important role for Lao PDR to achieve its goal of graduating from Least Developing Country status by 2020. Its rank in the East Asia and the Pacific region remains among the lowest, just above Myanmar (167) and Timor-Leste (173); and significantly behind most of its ASEAN neighbors and competitors in the region, such as: Cambodia (127), Vietnam (90), Thailand (49), and Malaysia (18). Rooms for continued improvements remains significant.

Lao PDR’s performance across the 10 Doing Business indicators are as follows:

1.      Lao PDR improved its ranking in the area of Starting a business from 154 to 153 as the time needed to start a business fell from 92 to 73 days.
2.      Lao PDR ranking in the area of dealing with construction permits is now 42/189.
3.      In the area of getting electricity in Lao PDR, Lao PDR now being ranked 158/189.
4.      Lao PDR is now ranked 66/189 in the area of registering property in Lao PDR.
5.      As outlined above, Lao PDR has made major progress in the area of getting credit by improving access to credit information and now ranks 70/189.
6.      Lao PDR still ranks 178/189 regarding the protection of minority investor.
7.      Paying taxes in Lao PDR stands at 127/189.
8.      The evaluation of trade cross borders of Lao PDR remains 108/189.
9.      Enforcing contracts in Lao PDR stands at 92/189.
10.  Resolving insolvency in Lao PDR remains at 189/189.

Source: Doing Business 2016 report, World Bank Group

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