By virtue of Prime Minister’s Notification No.47, issued on January 14 2020, Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith calls for the relevant sectors to address unresolved issues raised by the private sector at the 12^th Lao Business Forum (LBF), a government-endorsed platform for the private sector to raise issues and propose recommendations to the public sector, chaired by the premier himself.

Of the many remedial directives issued to the line ministries, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Ministry of Planning and Investment was to streamline administrative procedures to bolster doing business climate as well as to untangle unnecessary regulatory measures to support economic diversification to pave way for Lao PDR’s departure from heavy reliance on natural resource exploitation in order to ensure economic stability and sustainability. Such goal would require efforts from every line ministry, provincial department and district division, thus, the PM urged all sectors to remove investment restrictions by amending the Business Controlled List as so to open up the economy and attract investment.

The Ministry of Finance was charged to speed up its efforts to bring into force Guidance on Implementation of Law on Value-added Tax and to expedite the amendment of Presidential Ordinance on Fees and Charges to bring greater clarity to business operators, while the Bank of Lao PDR was tasked to take lead to liaise with line ministries and departments to simplify and reduce costs in registering loan and security agreements in order to bring down businesses’ overall investment costs.

Further, the promotion of innovative startups that offer goods and services in the information technology space was delegated to the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the promotion of nature-based tourism to the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism.

In light of the fact that the service industry has overtaken the industrial industry in terms of GDP contribution, the Ministry of Energy and Mines was entrusted with the responsibility to consider reducing service sector’s electricity tariffs to a more favorable one currently given to the industrial sector to further boost the competitiveness of service providers.

Given the fruitful outcomes of the public-private dialogue mechanism under the LBF, the PM was of the same opinion with the Lao National Chamber of Commerce and Industry on the concept of establishing a special taskforce committee to push for further reforms and address the problems of doing business.