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Despite some impressive economic growth rate and relative macro-economic stability in the first half of the 90;s, it has become clear that the obstacles to trade expansion in our country is closely linked to the low level of social service and the absence of income generating activities. Our past and continuing investment priorities aim at integrating the country by opening up every area to create the precondition for integrated rural development in the context of a market economy. A. Obstacles to Trade promotion and Trade support services.
1. Obstacles to Trade promotion.
The main obstacles to Trade promotion are the small and medium enterprises experience difficulties in expanding their exports. They have a lack of lessons and experiences in marketing their products in foreign market. A lack of capital is also one of the difficulties in promoting their exports because of the quantity and quality of the products can not meet the demands of the customers. In addition due to high import tariff of the EU and the USA the Lao exports are not competitive. The problems of the enterprises in obtaining reliable and up to date information's on export-import business opportunities are the followings:
" Slow accession to information and unclear one are sent to them and some of them are not accessible,
" Lack of capital for the advertisement of their products to the customers.
" Lack of skilled staff who can handle the collection, analysis and dissemination of information. The offering products for internationally acceptable for the Lao enterprises, but they can not, due to many problems: Firstly the quality of the products can not meet the international standard. Secondly we have the lack of skilled labor and lack of capital to install new technology equipment for the production. Finally the export transactions can not directly be carried out; most of them are done through third person. At the same time, other than in term of trade policy, we still face to many problems in developing our export and tourism services.
In addition, the enterprises have encountered many problems in their international purchasing and inventory management. As a number of transportation companies within the country is limited, we have to use the service of the foreign companies abroad and beside that we have to transport our goods are brought through, some are illegal the so called smuggling, thus those can not be ensured in terms of quality standard. 2. Problems related to trade facilities.
Although there are some achievements resulted from export promotion activities, many weakness still appear and need to be solved such as:
" Lack of technical knowledge in promoting producers.
" The establishment of groups or associations of producers are not widely extended across the country.
" The coordination and cooperation between the producer's groups association and the national chamber of commerce and industry are not very active. B. Obstacle to market accesses.
The main problems of the market access of Lao PDR are the tariff barriers. The products are not competitive, due to high cost of transportation and stringent rule of origins laid out by importing countries. The others specific problems or barries that are the most trouble for the exporters are the high import tariff rates for products exported to the USA and the stringent rule of origins as a major conditions of GSP laid out by EU and developed countries. At the same time the cost of transit service in Thailand as a gateway to sea transportation for the Lao PDR's export is very high. |
