VIENTIANE, July 24 (Vientiane Times/ANN): The Vientiane Logistics Park and its Thanaleng Dry Port offer great trade and investment opportunities for Thai entrepreneurs, the project operator has told Thai authorities.
The dry port houses extensions of the Laos-China and Laos-Thailand railway lines, making Laos an important gateway between South-East Asian countries and China.
“Businesses from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia are using this route,” Vientiane Logistics Park Co., Ltd. Vice President Tee Chee Seng told visiting Thai authorities last week.
“It is the best trade opportunity between Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and China.”
Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Transportation of Thailand, General Yodyuth Boonyatikarn, led a team on a tour of the dry port to learn how the new logistics facility is offering trade and investment opportunities.
Through the dry port, the railways and the China-Europe rail network, exports from Southeast Asia to Europe, including Germany, will enjoy cost effective transport.
President of Thailand’s Kaocharoen Train Transport Co., Ltd., Panya Paputsaro, told Vientiane Times earlier this month that he was able to cut transport costs by up to 40 percent compared to the cost of sea transport when shipping containers from Thailand to Europe.
Next month, the Thai businessman plans to ship dried food from Thailand to Russia by rail, which will take 13-15 days to reach Russian markets. This is a much shorter time than the 45 days it would take to send the goods by sea.
Like other Thai businessmen, Mr Panya has shipped a number of goods to China, mostly farm products.
So far, thousands of goods containers have been shifted through the dry port, which opened for service on December 4, 2021.
Over the first four months of this year, the dry port provided import-export and transit shipment services for 11,092 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), which were mostly carried by rail.
As part of the packaged Lao Logistics Link (LLL) project, which also includes the Vung Ang seaport in Vietnam’s central Ha Tinh province and a planned railway to link the seaport to Vientiane, the dry port in Vientiane facilitates access to markets in the Pacific region with cost effective services.
In addition to the trade opportunities offered by cheaper logistics and transport costs, Tee Chee Seng said the US$727 million logistics park and dry port also offer business opportunities in their investment zones.
Investment incentives including tax breaks will be offered for business operation in these zones. The zones include a free trade zone with designated main business activities in the HALAL hub, agricultural production park, technology park, office zone, SME building area, and a commercial zone.
In addition, an export processing zone is planned as a manufacturing export hub for the Asean and global consumer markets.
Tee Chee Seng said his company has prepared everything necessary for efficient business operation, including infrastructure and legal aspects and procedures, meaning that investors just need to invest capital and know-how.
Companies that manufacture and assemble finished products in Laos will enjoy trade privileges offered by major markets such as the United States and Europe to Laos, due to its status as a least developed country. - Vientiane Times/ANN
