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Laos Foreign Aid and Debt

Laos’s history of aid and debt is interesting for one because it is a next-door neighbor to China and for another because it only joined the WTO in 2013, and before that its communist government worked to stay financially independent [6]. Since it joined the WTO, though, there has been a large influx of foreign aid into the nation, mostly towards funding its energy-producing and transportation sectors. First, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank have been for a while funding the creation of massive hydroelectric dams in Laos [2]. Overall, this has been a very productive aid project as Laos went from energy-lacking to becoming a profitable exporter, and hydroelectric energy is still a growing market in the country [5]. However, a serious noted downside to the project is that due to the command economy of the nation and the lack of citizen involvement, the effects on the environment and risk that nearby communities are put at are being mostly ignored [2]. I believe there is valid cr
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Laos Infrastructure

In this blog I'll look at the situation of infrastructure in Laos and what effect it has on economic growth and development. First I'll look at physical transportation infrastructure. Laos is very lacking in road development. They only have a few tens of thousands of kilometers of road, and less than 20% of it is paved [2]. This is particularly an issue because unpaved roads can become nearly or completely untraversable in some of Laos's seasonal weather, which impedes international trade greatly, seeing as the landlocked nation does trade almost exclusively on roads, and also puts people in rural areas in danger because they cannot safely flee hazardous weather conditions [1]. The nation also lacks a developed train system, and as a whole the difficulty of moving about Laos hurts the development of its citizens as well as many of its industries, for example those of many natural resources that make up the backbone to its economy [2]. That said, much progress is being mad
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Laos Sustainable Development Goals

    For this blog, I've chosen five of the UN's sustainable development goals to look at how well Laos is doing at progressing towards those goals.     The first I'll look at is Goal 3, Good Health and Well-Being. In this category, I believe Laos is demonstrating significant progress. Data from World Bank shows Laos had an average life expectancy of about 43 in 1960, but since then has been consistently on the rise and by 2017 had reached 67 [1]. Although there is certainly space for improvement, this shows they are quite quickly making large strides at improving public health.     Next is Goal 7, Affordable and Clean Energy. I read a report related to doing business as a small or medium company in Laos, and one of the most-often cited issues is power outages [2]. This is concerning both because the report went on to specify 82% of employment in the nation comes from these small businesses, and also because it implies energy access is similarly scarce for everyone else.
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