Speech of Laos' minister of Post and Telecommunications

The Lao Government highly values the "One Belt and One Road" initiative set forth by Chinese Government. We believe it could open up many opportunities for our country to connect with the region and other parts of the world. No doubt, the use of ICT will help for new development opportunities.

Geographically, Laos is a land-locked country that has borders with China and four other ASEAN countries. Some challenges that we face are the fact that we do not have a submarine cable system, the lack of human resources, and the lack of funding for the on growing ICT infrastructure development internally and at the same time the on going integration requirements. We currently realize the fiber optic connection via China, Thailand, and Vietnam. Therefore, we are open to cooperate with all of our neighboring countries in enabling the linkage such as the linkage between ASEAN and China for Mutual Benefits and Win-Win.

At this meaningful event in recognizing the importance of strengthening and further developing bilateral cooperation between the two countries, CAC and MPT will sign a bilateral Memorandum Of Understanding on CyberSpace Cooperation and Development. We believe that this MOU would serve the common interests and contribute to the Win-Win development of both countries. This cooperation would help Laos to reduce the ICT development gap with our neighboring countries and ASEAN to handle the rapid change, and a sustainable development in the field. Also, it will enable us to fulfill our government vision to utilize ICT as a tool for connection.

We wish a great success to our conference.

Thank you for your kind attention!