The Joint Project Review Committee Meeting and the Nineth Implementation Support Mission Wrap-up for Lao Competitiveness and Trade (LCT) Project

Vientiane, 06 December 2023. The Permanence Secretary Office, Ministry of Industry and Commerce organized the joint Project Review Committee Meeting and the Nineth Implementation Support Mission Wrap-up for LCT Project at the Landmark Hotel, Vientiane. The meeting discussed key findings and recommendations from the nineth project implementation support mission and exchange our views on how the proposed recommendations from the support mission could be incorporated in the work plan and budget for the final year of the project.

The meeting was chaired by H.E. Dr. Manothong Vongsay, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Industry and Commerce and attended by more than 60 participants including representatives from development partners, implementing agencies from line ministries and private sector.

During his opening remarks, H.E. Deputy Minister discussed the challenges that the private sector is facing and stressed the importance of accelerated much needed business environment reforms to promote broad based economic recovery. “At the same time, the crisis also comes with opportunities for positive change, and the present crisis offers us opportunity to undertake or accelerate much-needed reforms that would place our country on firmer footing as economic recovery takes hold.” said Deputy Minister.

Ms. Melise Jaud, Senior Economist and Task Team Leader from the World Bank and Mr. Sengphanomchone Inthasane, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the MOIC jointly presented key achievements, challenges, and recommendations.

Key project achievements include significant regulatory reforms for starting a business process, progress with the development of the electronic business registration system (eBRS), the licensing reform agenda, approval and commencement of the implementation of the last three Business Environment Challenge Facility proposals, official adoption of SOP (standard operating procedures) for Joint Risk Management for imports and exports, operationalization of newly merged NTTFC structure and completion of the electronic trade statistics, and strong performance of Business Assistance Facility in providing advisory services and matching grants to support SMEs to improve their productivity, well-functioning of PPD under the LBF under the Lao Business Forum (LBF), well-functioning project execution system, and others.

The presenters highlighted some key challenges that the project needs to make extra effort to overcome. These include tight timelines for the development of electronic business registration system, low average grant size under the matching grant scheme, and enforcement of resolutions achieved under the PPD mechanism.

To ensure successful delivery of project intended outcomes, several actions were agreed by the meeting and a progress monitoring plan was also endorsed.

In his closing remarks, H.E. Dr. Manothong Vongsay encouraged NIU and all implementing agencies to reflect all practical comments made at today’s meeting in revising presented work plans and budgets before submitting to the Program Executive Committee for official endorsement. Deputy Minister Manothong Vongsay closed the meeting by thanking all development partners for the large impact they have already made in improving competitiveness of Lao private sector, including SMEs in both domestic and regional markets, particularly the World Bank for playing the role of trust fund manager and for providing project implementation support, and Australia, Ireland, and USA for their contributions to the multi-donor trust fund for this flagship project.