Mekong friendship bridge boosts Lao-Thai trade
Mekong friendship bridge boosts Lao-Thai trade
Laos and Thailand are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the opening of the first Mekong Friendship Bridge, linking the two neighbouring nations.
The Australian funded bridge, which was opened on April 8 1994, is not just a normal piece of concrete infrastructure.
It was a symbol of change in the region from a battlefield to a ‘trade-field', one of the key conditions for protecting peace and development.
For the Lao government, the bridge is a part of its policy to open the doors of the landlocked country to the world community after two decades of implementing socialist economic policy.
After the first Lao-Thai Friendship Bridge opened in 1994, today there are another four mekong bridges linking the two nations.
With the bridges, trade value between Laos and Thailand has continued to increase. In 2011, two-way trade between Thailand and Laos reached US$3.91 billion, up 35.8 percent from the previous year.
Total Thai exports to Laos were worth around US$2.78 billion last year, with imports worth US$1.12 billion.
The two countries plan to increase the bilateral trade value to US$8 billion by 2015 as a result of closer cooperation within the Asean Economic Community. The two countries will cooperate in construction of infrastructure to facilitate the trade.
Lao-Thai border trade at the Vientiane-Nong Khai Friendship Bridge reached US$462.5 million in the first quarter of the last fiscal year, according to a report from Thai news agency MCOT.
The value of Lao exports was around US$19 million, which was dwarfed by imports worth more than US$443 million, causing a trade deficit of about US$423 million. The main high value commodities imported into Laos from Thailand were fuel, worth about US$99 million, followed by automobiles worth US$31 million, and other consumer goods including processed foods.
Travel exchange between Laos and Thailand also increased thanks to the bridge. In 1994, the year the Vientiane-Nong Khai Bridge opened, 27,000 vehicles and 105,000 people used it to cross the Mekong river. By 2011 the total traffic across the bridge, since it opened, was almost 850,000 vehicles and 5.4 million people.
Mekong bridges also play an important role to enhance the capacity of Laos to connect with other Asean member countries. In 2015 the region will become a single market and production base, which will allow the free flow of goods within the region.
Asean has also signed a free trade agreement with China, which will help to boost investment and development in the region.
Regional connectivity will also help to reduce the development gap between new and old Asean member countries. As one of the new Asean member countries, Laos has invested a large amount of funding to build roads and bridges so as it can turn itself from a landlocked country into a land-link of the region.
According to a survey, one of the business sectors with the most potential in Laos after 2015 is logistics. Agribusiness and hydropower are also listed as some of the top investment sectors with good potential in the nation.
vientiane times
