The economic transition introduced in the late 1980s embraces a wide range of reforms in many areas, including SOEs, price controls, domestic and foreign investment, legal and regulatory framework, international trade, etc. Economic and trade reforms in Laos can be classified into three periods: closed economy with central control (1975-1985); transition to market-oriented economy (1986-2000); and open economy with current policies (2000
onward) (Douangboupha, 2010). In this classification, the analysis of RCA in this paper covers the end of the first period till the beginning of the third period with a focus on the
second period.