Land management authorities will pursue their plan to issue 400,000 land titles over the next five years until 2020, the Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment has said. Statistics show there are 2.6 million land plots across the country including 1.8 million for which land ...

Lao irrigation systems that use electrical pumps to feed water into channels to farmers’ fields owe a lot of money to Electricite du Laos, the national electricity authority, with many utilities bills remaining outstanding. Deputy Director General of the Department of Irrigation under the Ministry of ...

Investigations into a scheme in Laos in which private companies cashed government bonds issued in promise of payment for work they never performed have revealed the involvement of senior government officials who will never be brought to trial, a state auditor says. The auditing of the ...

Switzerland has agreed to provide a grant of US$16 million, while the World Bank has expressed its intention to offer a low interest loan of US$30 million to fight poverty in Laos. If secured, the funds will be used to finance Phase III of the Poverty ...

Visa exemptions for diplomats and officials / special passport holders of Laos and Kuwaiti came into force on 28 October after the two sides signed an agreement in Vientiane in June. However the passport holders of Lao and Kuwaiti nationality are allowed to stay in one ...

The Vientiane Declaration on Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (VD II or Vientiane Partnership Declaration), a result of joint efforts between the government and development partners to shift from effective aid to effective development cooperation, was signed late last week in the Laotian capital. Keep reading ...

Many private hospitals and medical clinics in Laos are charging excessive rates for medical treatment because the owners of these hospitals and clinics do not have enough understanding about the Law on Healthcare. In Laos, there are some 17 private hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics ...

Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived on 24 January in Laos, where the United States is helping the government clear a countryside still littered with unexploded ordnance dating to the Vietnam War. Kerry’s one-day stop for talks with senior officials marks a rare diplomatic visit. He ...

The capital of Laos is a low-rise, low-key city, especially when compared with the hulking high-rises and bustling streets of better-known Southeast Asian cities such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. But this once-sleepy city is fast shedding its sedate reputation due to a building boom ...

Vientiane traffic police have begun to issue fines to sand, gravel and soil trucks that are leaving trails of dirt and dust through the city. Director of the Vientiane Traffic Police Department, Lieutenant Colonel Youtthaphong Souvannasing, told Vientiane Times on 22 February that if police at traffic ...

The Lao language can be used in domain name systems and on the internet after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approves its use in the middle of the year. The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and the ICANN discussed the issue at ...

A consultation workshop on the Forestry Legality Compendium held in Vientiane on 6 November revealed that Laos is one of many countries still on the list of those where unregulated logging takes place. Laos is listed because internationally it is considered that some aspects of forest management ...

Salaries for civil servants in Laos remain stagnant and will not be increased during the next fiscal year largely because of corruption, despite the rising cost of living in the one-party communist nation, sources inside the country said. Sila Viengkeo, vice minister of finance, told a ...

Since the early 1990s, five rounds of the Lao Expenditure and Consumption Surveys have shown that measured inequality has increased at the national level — within both rural and urban areas, within almost all provinces of Laos and within each of the four major ethnic ...

Officials are wrestling with the problem of identifying a long-term solution to Vientiane’s chronic traffic jams and some are suggesting that an overpass might ease the situation. While no such scheme currently exists, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility to imagine that overpasses will ...

The Laos Ministry of Health has launched the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) programme to further boost immunity against polio for children under 12 months of age. A ceremony to launch the national introduction of the IPV took place at the National Culture Hall on 15 October, ...

The Environmental Protection Fund has decided to forecast a budget of over 2.5 billion kip to support its environmental protection activities in four target provinces of LuangNamtha, Phongsaly, Oudomxay and Bokeo, all of which have ample natural resources and valuable preserved wildlife habitats in the north ...

India and Laos on 18 September 2015 signed two Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) to strengthen bilateral ties between the two nations. The MoUs were signed by Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari and President of Lao Choummaly Sayasone in the Presidential Palace Ho Kham, Vientiane. Keep reading ...

Two Christians were arrested by the police in the province of Khammouan, in the east of Laos, on charges of alleged proselytizing. The police broke into the house of a Christian in the village of Nong-hang, and arrested Bountheung Phetsomphone, 43, a Christian leader from another ...

Half a million doses of the oral polio vaccine (OPV) will be distributed to at risk groups in Laos as health authorities respond to the dangers posed by the virus. The virus is responsible for the death of an eight-year-old boy in the province of Borikhamxay ...