People’s Supreme Court organizes a technical meeting to review and endorse the draft court forms to support implementation of the Law on Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy of Enterprises.

The People’s Supreme Court (Task Force Committee on the PM Order No. 02 together with its members) organized the technical meeting to review and endorse the draft court forms to support implementation of the Law on Enterprise Rehabilitation and Bankrupcy from 24 to 26 February 2021 at Naphakhuang Resort, Thalat District, Vientiane Province.

The meeting was chaired by Mr. Bounkhuang Thavisak, the Vice President of the People’s Supreme Court and attended by more than 30 people who are key member of the committee. The endorsed court forms will enable and support implementation of the Law on rehabilitation and bankruptcy of enterprises and process cases applied by the enterprises that has the intention to rehabilitate or file bankruptcy which there is currently no practice as such new law has just recently been promulgated. With such practice in place will increase confidence of domestic and international investors.

Due to the importance of the issue, the World Bank Group sets the Law and Bankruptcy as one of the Ease of Doing Business indicators in Lao PDR. As a result, the Prime Minister issued order No. 02, dated 01 February 2018, to designate the Ministry of Justice as the focal point to coordinate and establish a task force committee to include relevant sectors. In the task force committee, the People’s Supreme Court representative is a committee member responsible for the draft of court forms regarding the Law on Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy of enterprises. The draft forms will be an important tool to encourage, support and attract domestic and international investors, to facilitate and support the Ease of Doing Business in the country. Also, with filing of rehabilitation and bankruptcy of enterprises process in place, will help enterprises address financial issues and strengthen the Lao economic stability.

The three-day meeting went through all proposed agenda including researching and providing feedbacks by the task force members and other relevant sectors, such as Judges from People’s Supreme Court, the Vientiane Capital Court, representatives from key line ministries.

In his closing, Mr. Bounkhuang Thavisak, encouraged the participants to continue working and collaborate closely in order to ensure quality court forms that reflect international good practice being finalized and endorsed for implementation as soon as possible to address increasing bankruptcy cases of the private sector.

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.