According to the Lao Trade Portal, the country recorded a trade deficit of USD 23 million in December, which is considerably lower than the trade deficits of USD 45 million and USD 230 million reported in November and October, respectively.The overall value of trade hit USD ...

More than 1.32 million Thai people have reported sick in 2023 due to PM2.5 pollution, the Disease Control Department (DCD) said.A total of 1,325,838 patients suffered from air pollution-related diseases during the first five days of January, department director-general Dr Opas Karnkawinpong said.“The PM2.5 [particulate ...

Thailand is returning to its economic roots as a food producer, with overseas demand for rice, seafood, fruit and other edibles bolstering exports even as the Covid-19 pandemic dents production and shipments of manufactured goods.The proportion of food- and agricultural-related exports to total shipments jumped to ...

The Ministry of Finance has warned that electricity prices will rise if solar and wind power are not developed commensurately with grid and operational capacity.Renewable power production is booming thanks to a fit-in-tariff (FIT) price of 7.09-9.35 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour, much higher than prices ...

Carved out of the of the narrow isthmus that connects the Malay Peninsula to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi region rises from the Andaman Sea in the west to the forested Tenasserim Hills that border Thailand in the east. While much of ...

The Arakan State government’s ongoing citizenship verification process has caused disquiet among local Arakanese, some of whom contend that immigration officials are overly accommodating of unwarranted claims. The citizenship verification process, a largely ill-defined scheme that involves non-nationals providing proof of Burma-born ancestry, has led to ...

The number of visitors crossing into Cambodia through Poipet City spiked after last week’s bombings at tourist sites in Thailand, according to a senior official in the Banteay Meanchey provincial tourism department. The number of tourists coming in through the border town per day has almost ...

Malaysia has deported 114 Muslim Myanmar nationals who will be persecuted by the ruling military when they return, although they are not Rohingya, their lawyer said Thursday. Amnesty International Malaysia said Kuala Lumpur returned the Myanmar nationals to their strife-torn country, despite condemning the Burmese junta’s ...

River systems help sustain lives and livelihoods. But, thanks to excessive damming and drastic overuse of their water resources, some rivers are drying up before reaching the sea. Nowhere is this truer than Asia. Building large dams has increasingly run into grassroots opposition in established democracies ...

Vietnam’s export-driven economy is set to grow at its fastest pace in eight years in 2015 and it’s foreign firms in the country that are riding the wave, leaving local companies lagging far behind.   foreign-owned businesses shipped 70 percent of Vietnam’s total exports so far this ...

VIENTIANE (Vientiane Times/ANN) – More than 2,000 students studied in foreign countries in the first nine months of 2018, according to an official report.A spokesperson from the Student Affairs Department, Ministry of Education and Sports, told Vientiane Times that 2,291 Lao nationals studied in 27 countries from ...

What’s been up with (and in) the air we breathe? Smoggy haze and deteriorating air quality has seen folks in Laos’ capital and beyond reaching for face masks, air filters and measuring equipment.What they have found has been enlightening and disturbing. Air quality over much ...

Laos’ public debt could climb to nearly 95% of GDP by the end of 2022, making it one of the most heavily indebted and mostly likely to default nations in Asia, according to World Bank estimates published this month.Significantly, the World Bank’s already dire debt ...

Vietnam is assessed as one of the fastest-growing data centre markets globally, driven by the digitalisation efforts of domestic small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), tech-savvy young population, the advent of 5G, demand for self-sufficient digital infrastructure, and data localisation.The Vietnamese market surged to over 1 ...

Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have detected far fewer coronavirus cases than their more advanced Southeast Asian neighbors, but their economies are taking a beating all the same, potentially forcing a rethink of their development models down the road. Analysts at Maybank Kim Eng expect the ...

Steelmaker Hòa Phát Group (HPG) plans to issue over 250 million shares to raise capital for investment in the second phase of Hoà Phát Dung Quất iron and steel production complex. HPG will sell those shares at a price of VNĐ20,000 (US$0.8) per share, expecting ...

The government has given the green light to Tadsakoi Power Company Limited to build the Tadsakoi hydropower project in Sepon district, Savannakhet province. A concession agreement for the project was signed recently in Vientiane between Minister of Planning and Investment, Dr Souphan Keomixay, Deputy Minister of ...

Waste-to-electricity is believed to be the best solution to the waste crisis in Hanoi, but one waste-to-electricity plant will not be enough.Dr. Edward McBean from Guelph University in Canada said it is not difficult to import European technologies to use at Asian waste treatment plans. ...

As the lives lost to COVID-19 edge closer to 5 million globally, policymakers have demonstrated sharply growing interest in how protecting biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and addressing other planetary crises can improve public health. one planetary crisis that benefited temporarily from COVID-19 lockdowns but requires ...

Cambodia’s external public debt is well within acceptable limits, but remains vulnerable to financial shocks such as export slowdowns or exchange rate fluctuations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its latest assessment of the Kingdom’s economy. “Cambodia’s debt distress rating remains low with all debt ...