Raw Agriculture Products - Under The EBA

As a Least Developed Country (LDC), Laos benefits from the most favourable regime available under the EU’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP), namely the Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme.

The EU’s GSP regulation allows vulnerable developing countries to pay fewer or no duties on exports to the EU, giving them vital access to the EU market and contributing to their growth. The EBA scheme is one arm of the GSP, which grants duty-free and quota-free access to the EU for all products (except arms and ammunition) for the world’s Least Developed Countries, as defined by the United Nations.

The 27 Member States of the EU form a single territory for customs purposes. This implies that the EU is a Customs Union, meaning that its Member States have no customs duty barriers between themselves and they all have a common customs tariff for imported goods. Moreover, once customs duties have been duly paid and compliance with import conditions has been inspected, imported goods are free to circulate within the rest of the EU without any further customs controls.

Main steps for exporting raw agricultural products to the EU

Lao PDR traders seeking to engage in exports agricultural products from Laos have to adopt the steps demonstrated below and further elaborated on EU EBA Guide Raw Agricultural Products

Tools for Lao PDR Trader for exporting raw agricultural products to the EU

Access2Markets

The EU’s AccessMarkets online portal has the objective to better explain trade agreements and preferential trading schemes and help companies to understand whether their products are eligible for reduced tariffs. The portal allows users to look up the following details for imported and exported goods such as: Tariffs, Taxes, Rules of origin, Product requirements, Customs procedures, Trade Barriers, Trade flow statistics.

Lao Trade Portal

The Lao PDR Trade Portal is a platform which traders are able to obtain relevant information on importing into and exporting from Lao PDR, including instructions on import/export procedures, regulation for specific products, relevant laws and other useful information.