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Consultative meeting on Paperless Trade in Lao PDR – Lessons from Private Sector

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Ms. Vilayphone XINDAVONG, Deputy Director General as a representative of Foreign Trade Policy Department hosted a meeting on Paperless Trade in Lao PDR on Thursday 28th October 2021 in Vientiane.

The meeting was attended by the European Chamber of Commerce as well as several companies who represented private sector including all entities engaged in international trade like traders, transporters, customs brokers, insurers, banks and financial companies as the meeting was focused on the experiences of private sector directly.

The main purpose of the meeting was to collect feedback from varied stakeholders, contribute to understanding of the status on the key aspects of the relevance to paperless trade as well as making relevant recommendations to ensure the way forward and build capacity through the assessment.

During the meeting, private sector got opportunities to shared their own experiences and discuss in several areas regarding trading matters especially on the customs declaration for instance:

  • Experience in submitting feedback through LNCCI or Lao Business Forum;
  • Experience in providing feedback related to the regulation of trade operations to the Government of Laos;
  • Experience in Documents/Data submission through LNSW/ASYCUDA;
  • Readiness in using paperless system;
  • Experience in submitting documents in hard copy and difficulties of doing that and more.

ECCIL EuroCham Laos, as the representative of our members which is also significant part of private sector also make sure to raise our members’ voices to be heard by sharing our members’ experiences and feedbacks in several matters regarding trade to the representative of the Government of Lao in order to improve business environment and trading to be more convenience.