Trade Policy Advice

Trade Policy Advice Program: WTO Accession Related Assistance for LAO PDR

Financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO)

1. Background

The Working Party through which Lao PDR is negotiating the terms of its accession was struck on 19 February 1998, and the first important step of the negotiations – the submission of the Memorandum outlining the Lao Trade Régime – was made available to the Working Party in March 2001.  The Laotian government has been preparing other documents relevant to the accession process, including Questions and Answers, Implementation Action Plans and market access (goods and services) offers.  The current project, sponsored by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, intervenes with a specific mandate (below) at a propitious moment in the accession negotiations. Its overall goal is to provide policy advice and assistance that will reinforce Lao PDR’s aspirations to integrate into and further benefit from international trade through accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). 

2. Overall Goal and Content

The multi-year project aims at providing the Lao PDR’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce with support in preparing WTO negotiating documents (or reviewing them for overall coherency where these documents are prepared by multiple agencies) and negotiating strategies that play into Lao PDR’s development goals.  On the “multilateral” side of the negotiations, IDEAS Centre seeks to help the government prioritize legislative reforms, coordinate development-friendly regulatory reform and support the government in consultations with stakeholders.  On the market access side of the negotiations, IDEAS Centre assists with the consultations that go into preparing an offer as well as assisting with the technical aspects of elaborating those offers.  Finally, this work seeks to render coherent Lao PDR’s future WTO commitments with obligations already undertaken in the context of other preferential investment and trade agreements.  Seminars are planned to exchange views with the negotiating experiences of China and Viet Nam that aim to familiarize the Lao negotiators with these issues in the WTO context as well has promote coordination among responsible line ministries.

3. Objectives

The Program aims at:

4. Activities

The Program consists of two main sets of components with related activities:

A Trade Policy Advice component for the preparation of WTO documentation (or review if prepared) This information is to be gathered and considered in cooperation with partners in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and line ministries.   Capacity building is built into the project design, as it foresees that the Laotian negotiators progressively take on more responsibility for the substantive and analytical work required to prepare these documents. 

A coherence and coordination component which seeks to use the catalyst of external expertise to assist line ministries in understanding the WTO perspective of the requested reforms and helping them to bring about these changes more quickly.  Activities here include expert seminars and regional negotiator exchanges. 

5. Status Report 

The project is in the process of implementation and has helped Lao PDR prepare the documentation and strategies for three meetings in Geneva of the Working Party examining Laos’s bid for WTO Membership.

6. Contacts

Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Ministry of Commerce
http://www.moc.gov.la/default.asp

State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, SECO, WEHU
www.seco.admin.ch

IDEAS Centre, Geneva

Mr. Nicolas Imboden, Project Director, nicolas.imboden@ideascentre.ch
Mr. Philippe Borel, Program Manager, philippe.borel@ideascentre.ch