Economy and commerce

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce will continue efforts to improve or remove unnecessary measures and regulations relating to exports and imports to bolster cross-border trade. Officials in charge of trade facilitation met in Vientiane last week for the 2nd Trade Facilitation Committee Secretariat meeting to ...

In 2015, ASEAN and China signed an upgraded protocol to improve the original Framework Agreement for the ASEAN–China Free Trade Area (ACFTA). The upgraded protocol entered into force in July 2016 and implementation will start from August 2019. Since ACFTA was launched, China’s share of ASEAN ...

Green credit is a trend in the global banking and finance industry and more Vietnamese banks are following suit. The State Bank of Việt Nam (SBV)’s latest survey of credit institutions (CIs) in the field of green growth and green credit released recently showed that the ...

The World Bank is optimistic about economic growth in Laos, which is projected to rebound to 6.5 per cent in 2019, rising from 6.3 per cent recorded last year.  Despite continued fiscal tightening, the pickup is expected to be driven by robust investment in mega infrastructure ...

In the early hours of a Sunday morning this past March, officers manning a roadside checkpoint in Thailand’s Prachuap Khiri Khan province were hardly fooled when an approaching pick-up attempted to bypass their blockade by hastily detouring down a side road 300m away. The officers gave ...

An expensive high-speed railway is a nice dream, but let’s get real and build better roads between provinces first. On a visit to California, I discovered that the western U.S. state had kept pending a high speed rail proposal since 1996 due to funding cuts made ...

Getting old can be hard under any circumstances, and harder still when you’re poor. That’s the predicament for Thailand, the developing country first in line to face the consequences of a first-world-style baby bust. Data published last month by the United Nations show births in Thailand ...

The unfortunate speculation that China is building a military base in Cambodian territory is guided by only by ill-intended and misinformed plethora without any evidence. It is utterly a smear campaign against the national interests of Cambodians and the hard-earned peace and development the national government ...

Lay Sremeth and her family have lived on a narrow stretch of land by Phnom Penh’s Boeung Tompoun lake for three decades, fishing in its water and growing rice on its bank. But shortly after authorities approved filling in parts of the lake with sand and ...

Chinese investment in projects for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is changing the homes, economies, and environments of people across Myanmar, often in conflict zones. In some cases, those affected by the projects are calling for the government to stop or alter Chinese-backed projects ...