In preparation for the 13th Lao Business Forum (LBF), the LBF Secretariat organized this year’s first Private Sector Working Group meeting on January 29 to encourage the discussion of challenges that the private sector face when doing business.

The session, chaired by Mr. Phouxay Thepphavong, Secretary General of Lao National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, provided a platform for representatives of service sector businesses such as consultancy firms and real estate service companies to openly discuss and prioritize issues to be raised to the public sector’s attention.

Issues that the service sector businesses identified as impediments to their business operation at the meeting include those relating to enterprise registration procedure, business license approval and tax returns to name a few.

Private Sector Working Group meetings kickstarted the public-private dialogue process under the LBF mechanism in which groups of businesses, generally divided by their respective industry sector, gather together to debate and select issues to be raised at subsequent stages of the LBF process.

This ensures greater legitimacy to issues raised by businesses through the power of collective voice, in contrast to those raised individually by one single firm, thus creates a sense of urgency for the public sector to address such issues.

However, this may well pose as a restriction where only issues raised at this initial stage of the LBF process will be considered. Problems that were not raised as prioritized issues would then have to be put on hold until the next LBF round.

The rectification of doing-business issues helps promote private sector development through improving overall business climate in Laos. Ultimately, it will assist the Government to achieve its social economic development targets, one of them being Laos’ graduation from Least Developed Country status.