Department of Import and Export, Ministry of Industry and Commerce on behalf of the Trade Facilitation Secretariat Office (TDF) organized the Trade Facilitation Review Meeting for Central and Southern Provinces on 25-26 February 2016. Total number of 63 participants of this meetings are representatives from Governor’s Office, Department of Industry and Commerce, Department of Customs, Department of Agricultural and Forestry, Department of Health, Department of Public Works and Transportation, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and private sectors from central and southern provinces. The purpose of this meeting is 1.) to follow up the implementation of trade facilitation in provinces; 2.) to establish trade facilitation focal point in provinces; 3.) to hear issues and recommendations on the implementation of trade facilitation.
At the meeting, the participants have heard about the achievements of the implementation on trade facilitation of Lao PDR in the past two years including the development of the Lao PDR Trade Portal which disseminates more trade information to government and private sector. There were numbers of amended trade regulations for consistency with international standards. Private sector’s issues claimed to TFS had been resolved. Thus, information technology has been used in trade facilitation for example, ASYCUDA. However, challenges still remain especially for the coordination between central and local authority that does not sufficient enough caused difficulties in inspection and resolving private sector’s issues in local level.
The meeting agreed on the report of TFS and acknowledged about the report on convenient and difficulty to process on import, export, and transit through border by the Provincial Department of Industry and Commerce. Private sector of 6 provinces revealed that document procession takes long time and high cost. The main issues are: (1) stationing inspection along the road, (2) high charge for the transit of goods in storage (3) difficulties in exporting or transiting cassava to Thailand.
Mme. Bansati Thephavong spoke at the meeting: “ Lao PDR needs to resolve problems in regards with trade facilitations especially the coordination between central level and local level is not sufficient and efficient enough that caused difficulty in inspecting and resolving issues of private sectors in local level. Even through the mentioned issue is only one of the trade facilitation issues but is a main and a heart of it. Because with effective coordination, difficulties will be solved in time and more systematic”.
In order to resolve the issues, the meeting unanimously approved that: (1) there shall be focal points for trade facilitation in local level, for example in Provincial Department of Industry and Commerce; (2) Structure of focal points in local level shall similar to central level; (3) There shall be a training on Certificate of Origins. Moreover, private sector also requested to: (1) disseminate regulation of transit countries; (2) MoIC to issue instruction on electronic licensing and disseminate it through Lao PDR Trade Portal; (3) Disseminate AEC’s policies that effect local business; (4) Amend import-export regulation for consistency with international regulation; (5) Establish mechanism to compile trade statistics and provincial investment to support research and report; (6) Review the implementation of single window inspection in Dan Savanh-Lao Bao to learn experience; and (7) Reduce documentations for export into 3 copies.
In addition, TFS has also collect information both convenient and challenging of private sector to report to the Director of TFS to consider resolving issues of private and improve appropriate regulation in the future. TFS office, Department of Import and Export will continue to enhance relations with local in nationwide.
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