Lao PDR Country Report

Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is a small country in South East Asia. It is a land lock country which is located in the middle of the South East Asia peninsula. It has a border with five countries namely China in the North, Vietnam in the East, Cambodia in the South, Thailand and Myanmar in the West. Lao PDR has a total area of 236,800 square kilometres and about 70 percent of that is covered by mountains. Lao P.D.R has population of 6,127,910 people (2009) in which 3,070,013 people is female. The female population is accounted a little bit more than 50 percent of the total population. The average of the population density is 26 people per square kilometre. Laos consists of 17 provinces. Its capital city is Vientiane. It has population of 754,384 people. Since Lao PDR had changed its economic policy to the opened door policy in 1986, the economy has been progressing and expanding rapidly. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2009 increased 7.5 percent from the previous year. It was accounted about US$ 3,421 million at the 2002 constant price. If it is estimated by activity at the current price it was about US$ 5,585 million and it per capita was about US$ 914. The economy has been gradually changing from agriculture oriented activities to a more wide range of activities such as service and industry. In 2009, the service sector has gained 38.7% while agriculture sector has had only 30.5% of the all GDP. The industry sector also increased rapidly, because there are a lot of investments in mineral and hydropower sectors. Even though in 2009 it has contributed to the GDP only 24.5%, it was projected to take the bigger share in the GDP in the next 5 years.