Lao products to secure local market share
Lao products to secure local market share
Laos will seek ways to promote and protect the sale of local products to ensure they will secure a market share in the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector after the inception of the Asean Economic Community.
A senior government official at the Foreign Trade Policy Department Dr Laohoua Cheuching, announced the move at a press conference to inform about the results of the 47th Meeting of the Asean Economic Ministers (AEM) held in Malaysia from August 22-25.
He said that many people now worry that Lao products will be in trouble when the AEC is officially launched at the end of this year because of the free flow of regional products.
“Currently we can already see many foreign products on sale in Laos, which is not strange at all. At the same time, our agricultural products such as coffee and tea products are already well-recognised by domestic and international buyers,” he said.
When asked about how many kinds of local preserved products there are for which the authorities will not allow similar products from Asean countries to be imported to Laos, he said some agricultural products will not yet be allowed to be imported to Laos.
This restriction will continue with the inception of the AEC but agricultural imports will be allowed at an appropriate time in the future.
According to Dr Laohoua, the majority of local agricultural and brewery products will be preserved for local businesses unless the imported products are properly proved to have Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary (SPS) and Country of Origin (CO) certification.
When the Asean Economic Community comes into force at the end of this year, many developing Asean countries will be ready to set zero tariff barriers for imported products.
“The majority of Asean countries have already implemented the measures to reduce tariff barriers for products over 98 percent to 99 percent, meanwhile Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) will be ready in 2018 with a total of more than 600 product items having their tariffs removed,” Dr Laohoua said.
At the same time, the total of more than 600 lines of protected products in Laos are mainly agricultural commodities.
