Laos Econ Blog

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

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