In recent years, foreign investment

In recent years, foreign investment in Laos has stagnated at a level below USD 300 million. The Government has been pursuing a national policy of FDI promotion, but there are still remaining barriers to attract FDI, especially the length of time invested in the procedures to obtain the required authorisations, inequalities in terms of tax benefits, the high cost of some applied tariffs and the poor-quality infrastructure. Laos has been steadily moving up in the Doing Business ranking published by the World Bank, ranking 148th out of 189 in 2015. Regional actors are slowly overtaking Western groups and multilateral institutions in the hydroelectric sector. For example, Thailand has benefited extensively from Laotian electricity and therefore it has strongly invested in it. The projects in the areas of hydraulic energy production and the exploitation of the mining resources represent half of the foreign investment accumulated over the last ten years. Transportation infrastructure, tourism and large agro-forestry projects are also attracting new investors. The main investing countries are Laos' large neighbours Vietnam, China and Thailand, followed by France.