New laws and regulations related to its future WTO rights and obligations, and the first bilateral agreement with a present member, are helping to take Laos into a new phase in its membership talks, reports the World Trade Organization. The working party of WTO members negotiating with Laos agreed in its fifth meeting on July 14, 2009, that it can start to consider Laos’ future commitments in a range of subjects.
Laos — officially the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) — and its negotiating partners now envisage the talks moving faster, twelve years after Laos first applied and eleven years after the working party was set up. Zhang Xiangchen, chairperson of the working party, informed that the sixth meeting could be before the end of this year or early next year.
The next meeting will examine “elements of a draft working party report”. This will include Laos’ first possible commitments on implementing the WTO agreements, added to the present series of drafts that the working party has been examining.
Recent progress in talks between the two parties, has allowed the country to move forward through negotiation stages to drafting membership terms. The working party’s report will be the central document in the new member’s accession agreement.
“With hard work, flexibility and goodwill on all sides, I believe this accession has the potential to accelerate,” Zhang said. “As chairman, I would certainly like to build on the momentum generated at today’s meeting.”
32 WTO members are in Laos’s working party (59 if the EU’s member states are also counted). WTO members are free to choose whether to participate in the working party.
As a least-developed country, Laos’s application is covered by the 2002 General Council guidelines for accelerating membership negotiations. In order to support the negotiation, Laos is receiving technical assistance from other WTO members. Chairperson Zhang welcomed new offers of technical assistance for Laos from the US and China and urged other members to do the same.
Since the last meeting in July 2008, Laos has reached a bilateral agreement on market access with China and continues to negotiate with some others, including: Australia, Canada, Chinese Taipei, the EU, India, Japan, Rep. of Korea and the US. It had already reached agreement bilaterally with the EU on goods but not yet services. (WTO membership agreements require bilateral agreements to be “multilateralized”, ie, whatever Laos agrees bilaterally would have to apply to all WTO members.)
Laotian Industry and Commerce Minister Nam Viyaketh listed for the working party the important new laws and regulations enacted since the last meeting a year ago. The areas covered include investment, importing and exporting, customs, food safety and animal and plant health (“sanitary and phytosanitary measures” or SPS), product standards and other technical barriers to trade (TBT), tax reform, and foreign exchange and payments.
“The team that I have brought to Geneva has worked tirelessly since we met last year to bring Lao PDR’s trade regime closer into line with WTO requirements,” Nam said. Adding: “A tremendous amount of progress has been made.”
This, despite Laos being hit by the global economic downturn, with “slower exports and foreign direct investment, lower tourist revenue, and a strain on the fiscal budget,” he said.
Nevertheless, Laos continues to believe that “trade integration is a crucial means and an essential driving force to our socio-economic development,” he continued.
“My government is committed to pushing forward internal reforms despite global fears of rising trade protectionism. Maintaining the momentum of these reforms, we believe, is important for the longer-term competitiveness of the Lao economy.
“At the same time, we must be mindful that the reforms do not further exacerbate the problems faced by weakened sectors.”
He highlighted one in particular: banking. “I trust that Members will show flexibility in negotiations and allow Lao PDR time to adopt, for example, banking regulations that ensure macroeconomic stability or a modern customs valuation regime over time so that government revenues are not eroded. Laos is currently working with the Asian Development Bank to set up the software and hardware for such a system,” he informed.
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