Ministry of Industry and Commerce organizes the LCT Project Review Committee Meeting

Vientiane Capital, 23 November 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce organized the Lao Competitiveness and Trade (LCT) Annual Project Review Committee meeting at Crown Plaza Hotel to review its performance during the last six months. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Somchith Inthamith, the Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce together with almost 90 participants from the implementation agencies (IAs) within the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and other line ministries, donors and development partners joined the meeting.

Mr. Somchith Inthamith, the Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce provided the opening remarked for the meeting that “although the impact of COVID-19 pandemic limits the project implementation, our project is still able to reach the key achievements. For today’s meeting, we would like to discuss our remaining challenges, issues and solution to ensure that our project could reach the key and specific achievements of the project”.

The representatives of each IA presented their progress of project implementation according to the agenda, which started from the IAs whose work related to Component A consisting of making the procedures of starting a business easier, streamlining and publishing operating licenses and supporting border business reform, followed by the IAs from Component B presenting their progress on supporting the national trade facilitation secretariat (NTFS), and trade facilitation agreement challenge facility.

Followed by the presentation from the representatives working on Component B the representatives from Component C presented the progress of Business Assistance Facility (BAF II) which align on the project objective of improving firm level competitiveness. Then, the representatives from Component D provided the summary of the project implementation on supporting better and more inclusive policies, especially supporting Public-Private Dialogue. Finally, the Director of National Implementation Unit provided the summary of the key outputs and priorities of each component of the project. During the meeting, the participants has opportunities to asked for clarification of project implementation and discuss the challenges and potential implementation plans during the Q&A session.

This meeting was supported by Lao Competitiveness and Trade (LCT) project, which is a multi-donor project funded by the World Bank Group, Australian Aid, Irish Aid, and USAID that aims to eliminate barriers to private sector-led growth by improving the regulatory environment, lowering trade costs and raising firm-level competitiveness.