Lao People's Democratic Republic Systematic Country Diagnostic : Priorities for Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity
Lao PDR has made important gains in development in recent decades. Incomes rose, poverty declined, access to several key public services improved, and Lao PDR met a number of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Lao PDR’s asset endowments, geog...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/983001490107755004/Lao-PDR-Systematic-Country-Diagnostic-Priorities-for-Ending-Poverty-and-Boosting-Shared-Prosperity http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26377 |
| Summary: | Lao PDR has made important gains in
development in recent decades. Incomes rose, poverty
declined, access to several key public services improved,
and Lao PDR met a number of its Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). Lao PDR’s asset endowments, geography, and economic
and social legacies have intertwined to shape a development
experience of strong growth, limited inclusion, and
considerable risks to sustainability. This reflects relative
abundance of natural resources; landlocked and small size,
ethnically diverse but part of a rapidly growing region; and
institutions that have not kept pace with the changes in the
economy. This Systematic Country Authority Diagnostic (SCD)
aims to identify interventions that would deliver sustained
growth and edge Lao PDR toward the twin goals of ending
extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The SCD
employs a framework with three main pathways toward the twin
goals, each addressing weaknesses identified in the
diagnostics. Sustainably and efficiently managing the
country’s natural resources, including collecting and
managing resource rents, (Pathway 1) is critical to
delivering strong growth and securing resources to build Lao
PDR’s endowments of human and physical capital. Pathway 2
focuses on unlocking opportunities in the non-resource
sectors to increase farmers’ incomes and create non-farm
jobs, while Pathway 3 emphasizes improvements in human
capital required to increase the ability of people to take
on these opportunities. Measures to address the high
vulnerability of people in Lao PDR further inform Pathway 3.
The SCD also highlights the importance of strengthening
institutions and governance, a critical cross-cutting
challenge that affects progress in each of the three areas
above. The pathways can be easily mapped to the three main
outcomes of the eighth National Socio-Economic Development
Plan (NSEDP). |
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