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Lao Rocker ‘Sack Cells’ Goes Viral in China with “Belt and Road” Song

Sack Cells Belt and Road Song

Athisack Ratanavong, or more popularly known as ‘Sack Vong Cells’, is recognized in Laos as being a talented rock musician and singer for his work at Indee Records. However, the Lao national has recently caught the attention of people in China with his soft rock track, “Yidaiyilu”, the Chinese term for the Belt and Road Initiative, that is now a trending song on Chinese social media, despite it being performed in Lao.

As previously reported by The Laotian Times, the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative  is a crucial part of China’s development strategy and was initially proposed in 2013. The aim of the initiative is to  deepen economic cooperation with countries in Asia, Europe and Africa, focusing on developing a trade and infrastructure network that connects the three continents.

In collaboration with journalist-turned-songwriter, Vilayphone Vongphachanh, the two managed to capture the significance of the Belt and Road concept in simple words and a catchy tune. Key phrases such as, “mutual benefits”, “win-win results” and “enhancing connectivity across nations” are a few of the lyrics that keep the song straightforward for the listener.

Working as a host and program editor in the Lao service at China Radio International, Vilayphone has resided in China for six years, and was inspired to write the song based on his knowledge about the Belt and Road Initiative through his work. He explained that the song was produced in 2016 to mark the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Laos, but only just recently gained traction after a music video was produced.

The video has been released ahead of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which is being held in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

 

Locusts Swarm Northern Laos Wreaking Havoc on Crops

Locusts

The Northern provinces of Huaphan, LuangPrabang, Oudomxay, Phongsaly and Xieng Khuang have been invaded by locusts, reaching plague proportions despite attempts to control the insects with chemical sprayings.

After receiving more insecticide, spraying machines and other equipment from China, Lao and Chinese agriculture officials have teamed up to brainstorm ways on how to effectively combat the swarms that have been wreaking havoc on local crops.

Director General of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s Agriculture Department, Mr Vilaysouk Khennavong and a representative from the Chinese Embassy to Laos, Mr Wang Qihui, signed an agreement for the provision of the supplies on Thursday.

Despite the government of China equipping the Agriculture Department with 21 vehicles, 1,100 machines,1,000 protective suits and other various equipment this year alone, it has proven to be ineffective against the mass of locusts dominating the area.

With additional equipment expected to be delivered to the suffering provinces soon, officials will be better armed to fend off the invading swarms.

During the previous locust invasion at the end 2016, authorities reported that the locusts had laid eggs in 640 places on an area of more than 9,000 hectares. The area included 376 villages in 24 districts of the five provinces.  

Last month the eggs hatched in 81 locations in 38 villages in 12 districts of Huaphan, LuangPrabang, Oudomxay and XiengKhuang provinces.

Officials from the agriculture and forestry offices have been working tirelessly with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, local authorities and villagers, in attempt to control the locusts population by destroying the eggs, spraying pesticides, and being extremely vigilant of outbreaks.

A surveillance team from the Agriculture Department predicts there will be locust outbreaks in many districts and more provinces, and has observed an increase of 20-30 percent in locust infestations this year, as compared to previous years.

A surveillance team from China has forecasted  that if control measures are successful, the outbreak will stabilize in the next two or three years.

Apple of Her Eye: Nothing Like The Real Thing

LTH Apple Store

The manager of Laos’ only official Apple Authorised Reseller store says there’s nothing like the real thing.

As a marketing symbol, you can’t get much more potent than the apple. That remarkably simple and instantly recognisable image of an apple with a single bite taken out is now as ubiquitous as a can of Pepsi or – in Vientiane at least – a bottle of Beerlao.

But when it comes to consumers, devotees of Apple’s carefully curated line of products generally care about one thing – where can they get the real deal? And where, if their real-deal devices break, can they get them properly repaired?

While Vientiane is now dotted with the Apple symbol, most adorn shops that supply Apple products bought in Thailand, and don’t provide any user support. Others are on shops that have good deals with other “grey market” resellers.

But, thankfully, there is one authorised distributor of Apple products in Laos – the LTH Store, the electronics distributor that also imports Nokia, Samsung, Toshiba, Philips, Faber, among others. Carine Prinsitthirat knows her phones. Her father owns L Thong Huot, and her family has long cornered the electronics and mobile phone market in Laos.

Born and raised in France, Mrs Prinsitthirat moved to Laos with her parents when she was 15, and studied international business management in Thailand, destined for life at the helm of a large company.

LTH Apple Store Laos

So she has been able to watch the rise and rise of the mobile phone market in Laos, beginning with Nokia in the early 2000s. By the time the iPhone stormed the world in 2008, Nokia had a solid hold on the Lao market, with the massive logo-ed store on Dongpalane road a beacon for users everywhere of the real thing. Today, nine years later, the old Nokia store has been combined with the main LTH shop (LTH Store shop), with Samsung is next door and Apple right across the street. LTH owns all of them but, says Mrs Prinsitthirat, convincing Apple to let LTH sell its authorised products was no easy matter.

LTH were initially able to sell Apple products in a small corner of one of its electronics stores, to see how they fared on the market. In this context, the company’s experience selling Nokia and Samsung was a help, rather than a hindrance, and in fact, according to Mrs Prinsitthirat, most Apple sellers deal Samsung phones as well.

And besides, she says, the Apple market is unlike any other on the tech scene. “The target market is different,” she says.

“With Samsung, for example, the bestseller will vary because of its wide variety. But the target is still not the same because it’s Android and the iPhone is iOS. Once you have iOS you never switch’’

Once it was clear there was a strong market – that is, enough customers with means to indulge in their love of fine tech design – LTH was allowed to open a J Studio & LTH (JStudio by LTH), devoted exclusively to Apple products – complete with the trademark, blond-wood-and-chrome trademark fitout – in Vientiane Center.

The licence to sell iPhones comes with access to authorised service providers from Apple, and she has been impressed at the quality of the service provided, especially for products needing repairs or replacements.

“Actually the system is very good, Apple provides everything.’’ she says.

“Basically, when the phone is activated, we can show the customer when the warranty starts online. And when a phone or computer needs repairing or replacing, DHL will come and pick up the phone every business days on our doorstep, and within 3 to 5 business days, you can get your new phone. If you compare with other after sale services, this is very efficient.’’

She says that as a Lao person, opening an Apple Authorised Reseller store is a dream come true – at just 24, she fits solidly into the iPhone generation.

Her next ambition is to become an Apple Premium Reseller, meaning the store can sell the latest products, including the increasingly-sought-after Apple Watch.

Champa Meuanglao
Written by:
Latsamy Phonevilay
Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao,  official Lao Airlines in-flight magazine, 2017 May-June Edition

PM to Slash Civil Servant Stipends, Shifts Focus to Rural Volunteers

rural teacher
rural teacher

Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith has stated that ‘benefits’ should no longer be given to those working in public administration, but insists that such support go to volunteers working for the government in remote and rural areas instead.

During the ongoing National Assembly (NA) session, the Prime Minister pointed out that the number of civil servants in the country was high relative to the total population, due to more civil servants being recruited each year in contrast to those retiring.

“If the number of civil servants is in excess of those actually needed, it will mean that we are everlastingly doing them a favor,” he stated, adding that the perpetual supply of government positions results in people rejecting other forms of work, especially in business.

An estimated 150,000 civil servants currently work in ministries, government agencies, and local authorities, accounting for more than 2 percent of the country’s population, of which half have a lower or intermediate level diploma.

This equates to the government employing 2.5 people out of every 100 citizens, while in most countries that figure is less than two public servants per 100 citizens.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has been directed by the PM to hire  civil servants based on methodical studies and the principles of public administration.

Prime Minister Thongloun also mentioned continuous complaints about the shortage of teachers in many rural schools, where volunteer teachers are often put in place to fill positions. Directing sympathy towards these volunteers, the PM acknowledged that they work just as hard as teachers who are employed as civil servants, possibly even harder, however they are unable to gain civil servant status.

It has been suggested by Mr Thongloun that a fund be established for volunteer teachers, with contributions from domestic and international donors, business operators, and private citizens.

He also touched on the struggles of the local people in these rural areas, who earn as little as 10 or 20,000 kip a day but feel obligated to feed the volunteer teachers.

The government has previously announced only 5,000 new employees would be hired in 2017, with the new quota of civil servants based on the financial capacity of the government to pay officials’ salaries.

In line with this policy, the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism announced in March it would not recruit any new staff to work at the central level, but would request the transfer of civil servants from provincial departments if necessary.

Government Encourages Contraception Among Adolescents

lao mother
lao mother

In an effort to reduce maternal and child morbidity and mortality rates, Laos will focus on reducing the unmet need for contraception to 13 percent, and increase the contraceptive prevalence rate from 42 to 65 percent by the year 2020.

During the first National Family Planning Conference held in Vientiane on Tuesday, statistics indicated that the nation’s unmet need for family planning still lingers at a high 20 percent, and surging up to 31 percent among various ethnic groups.

Statistics also revealed that the adolescent birth rate is 76 live births per 1,000 girls in the 15-19 age group, adolescent contraceptive use is low at 22.3 percent, and the unmet need for contraception is at 22.6 percent.

Themed “Investing in Family Planning for Economic Prosperity”, the National Family Planning Conference was officiated by Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Sonexay Siphandone, with representatives from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), World Health Organisation and World Bank in attendance .

The Minister of Health Associate, Prof. Dr Bounkong Syhavong stated, “quite simply, family planning provides choice to individuals and families, helping us work towards a future where every pregnancy is wanted and every childbirth is safe.”

The Prof. Dr added, “we have seen Laos’ maternal mortality ratio drop from 357 per 100,000 live births in 2012 to 206 per 100,000 live births in 2015, surpassing the Millennium Development Goal target we had set. We have come a long way, but we still have some miles to go to reach the target of 180 per 100,000 live births, in order to graduate from the Least Developed Country status in 2020. We couldn’t have done this without family planning along with strengthened midwifery services.”

By granting easier access to family planning, the number of adolescent pregnancies will decrease significantly, allowing young women to stay in good physical health, completing their education, striving towards future goals, and eventually  deciding on their own terms, when and how many kids they may want to have.

On a global scale, family planning has contributed to preventing maternal and child morbidity and mortality substantially.

Along with UNFPA, Laos has also seen tremendous support for the family planning program by Family Planning 2020, the global initiative funded by a range of donor governments and institutions, and hosted by the United Nations Foundation.

Laos; a Key Part in the Grand Scheme of Things

belt and road
belt and road

The “One Belt, One Road” initiative is a crucial part of China’s development strategy to deepen economic cooperation with countries in Asia, Europe and Africa.

The Belt and Road Initiative was initially proposed by China in 2013, and refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, focusing on developing a trade and infrastructure network that connects Asia with Europe and Africa, along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road.

Vice Minister of Public Works and Transport, Lattanamany Khounnyvong, states that the initiative commonly seeks the development of the countries along the Belt and Road with the goal of  “joining hands towards prosperity.”

Highlighting the country’s in-depth involvement in the initiative, Mr Lattanmany explained that the China-Laos railway, which began construction on Dec. 25, 2016, has been cited as the most significant project in the Eighth National Socio-Economic Development Plan 2016-2020 of Laos.

“As this is the No. 1 project of Laos, it is necessary to implement national policies well, promote socio-economic development, support the mission of poverty eradication along the railway route and help increase the incomes of local residents,” he stated.

According to the Vice Minister, Laos has been earnestly collaborating with Chinese contractors to assist local villagers, supporting infrastructure construction of roads, schools and healthcare services running along the railway.

It was also added by Mr Lattanamny that, “once completed, the railway will help facilitate people-to-people exchanges, reduce travel time and costs. The railway will also help promote agricultural production in Laos, increase income, attract more foreign investment and provide more employment opportunities.”

It is speculated that when the high-speed railway has reached completion and is fully functional in Laos, Lao people can offer services along the route, creating job opportunities for local people. Laos can also benefit from freight charges and people commuting via railway.

According to the Vice Minister of Public Works and Transport, this project will be crucial  in assisting Lao people escape poverty and raise living standards significantly, also citing that the construction of the China-Laos railway will help train high-tech personnel from Laos and provide valuable experience for the country in railway construction.

As previously reported by The Laotian Times, the China-Laos railway will run a total length of 414 km, with over 62.7 percent of bridges and tunnels, linking the Mohan-Boten border gate in northern Laos and the capital city of Vientiane.

Construction of the railway is scheduled to be completed within five years, and will cost an estimated 5.8 billion U.S. dollars to fabricate; 70 percent of which will be covered by Chinese investors, and the rest covered by Laos.

The China-Laos railway is the first overseas route connecting with the railway system in China, using Chinese technology, equipment and investment.

Lao Minister of Energy and Mines, Khammany Inthirath, added that the Belt and Road initiative is a significant and indispensable way to deepen cooperation between Laos and China in a plethora of fields such as investments, industrial production, trade, finance, culture, social integration policy and infrastructure.

On the Table: Building a Startup Community in Vientiane’s First Co-Working Space

Toh-Lao-Co-Working-Space

The life of a freelancer and startup can be a lonely and tough one, especially when you don’t even have an office to work from each day. A co-working space to work in – a desk, a chair, and internet connection – is as much about fostering a community as it is about amenities.

Souphaphone ‘Nana’ Souannavong discovered this pretty quickly when she returned to her hometown of Vientiane after years of studying overseas. Having completed a Masters in Finance in Rochester, New York, she set herself up as a freelancer, to get back into the swing of life in Vientiane. But during her seven months as a freelance consultant, one thing bothered her – she didn’t have an office.

Coffee shops or the house she shared with her big family had to do, and neither was satisfactory. This was back in 2009, and by then, Nana had already started to ponder the possibility of setting up a co-working space in Vientiane – the kind of shared office community that has taken the world by storm over the past decade. But while many of the world’s major cities have large and profitable co-work hubs, Nana didn’t believe Laos was ready yet.

In the ensuing years, she read about co-working spaces popping up all over the region – Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia. But it wasn’t until she read about a space opening in Myanmar that she really began to take notice.

It’s now four years down the track, and Nana is speaking inside what is now an established work hub – Toh-Lao, just off the main riverside road in the centre of Vientiane. The name translates literally as “Lao Table”, a concept that speaks to the simplicity of the idea of a co-work space – a place that gives you the basics to work productively. It has already attracted all kinds of tenants – expats on short-term consultancies, foreign freelancers doing visa runs, local businesses needing a registered office space while they get their enterprise off the ground. But it has also become something of an incubator for start-up talent in the tech sector. The space offers both individual desk spaces and private offices, and one of the larger offices upstairs is full to bursting with young programmers, tapping away intensely at computers.

Bizgital, a technology start-up, moved in just 10 months ago with three people. Now, it has 15 staff and counting, and has outgrown its temporary home at Toh-Lao. It’s a dilemma Nana is only too happy to be able to solve, with a new space set to open nearby. The company is also a perfect example of why she wanted to set up the space in the first place.

Apart from her personal need for an office and a focused working community, she says she wanted to test a personal theory she had about Laos.

“I wanted to prove something, because Lao people, especially young people, we always have this belief that we don’t have entrepreneurs – real minds,” she says.

“For example, when you’re in college life, you might have some idea of wanting to start your own business, but then when you actually graduate, your parents will say, ‘Don’t do a business, it’s too risky. Do something else, work for the government, work for a big organisation’. So that’s why I wanted to check it out, whether this country has hope for start-ups or not.”

She also wanted to expand her own career as a financial advisor, and explore what she had been noticing more and more in Laos – the number of investors who were ready to take risks. The country was ready, in other words, for a start-up community, and it was time to, well, start one up. It was a challenge, at first, to get many locals to use the space, much less up-and-coming businesses.

“Lao people probably thought, what is a co-working space, why come to this office with just a chair and a table? What are we going to do here? They don’t realise the value of the community here,” she says.

She began running free workshops and seminars to spread the word about the possibilities of working in a shared space, without the pressures of renting an exclusive office.

startup-weekend-Toh-Lao Co-working Space

She also organised the first Lao chapter of the international event Start-Up Weekend, a kind of intensive pop-up event that’s an opportunity to pitch ideas for a start-up and get feedback from a community of mentors and successful businesspeople. This was back in 2014, and more than 50 people signed up, more than half of whom actually took to the stage to pitch their ideas.

Nana’s theory was proven, at least in the world of tech start-ups. While she still tries to keep a range of tenants in the original space – foreigners, consultants, local freelancers – her new space will have a more concentrated focus.  And while she sees Toh-Lao as a type of incubator – “we make a little idea happen to make a business, but it takes longer because we let them grow organically” – the new space will be an accelerator.

“It’s where, when you have an idea, and you have a team of people, you bring them in, you give them a lot of mentors, you put mentors to work with them, to make sure that they can actually go to market and launch their business within three to six months,” she says.

Bizgital is the perfect example of a potential tenant for the new – as yet unnamed space – initially a group of “hardcore programmers” unaccustomed to doing business, who have since been matched with an established investor, and have now shifted their model to digital marketing and IT consulting.

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Toh-Lao is now part of the wider co-work space ecosystem, partnering with other such spaces in neighbouring countries so that members can access the same space and benefits when moving between countries.

What Nana wants most of all is to find a start-up champion – a person or business committed to growing small businesses and helping ideas flourish.

“That’s our immediate goal, and we really hope that with the acceleration program, we can make it happen faster,” she says.

But she is realistic about the comparatively slow pace of the market in Laos.

“If we look into the whole eco-system itself, the problem is still with the skills and education, so we hope that in the future we can play some role to have some courses dedicated for start-ups and entrepreneurs, not like subjects they learn in universities and college,” she says.

“The way that start-ups think, you have to disrupt the industry, basically you have to be creative and think out of the box. So that’s very important, to set the right mindset for them, and I believe it comes from education, it comes from younger age, and we hope to be able to contribute in the long run.”

 

Champa Meuanglao
Written by:
Sally Pryor
Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao,  official Lao Airlines in-flight magazine, 2017 May-June Edition

Staying On Top: How 108 Jobs is Riding the Startup Wave

108 Jobs

When it comes to technology-based start-ups – or any new business, for that matter – disruption is the name of the game. You want to storm an existing market, or creep into the margins and beat others at their own game, securing your own place in the vast ocean that is the modern start-up landscape.

For some, it’s enough simply to cruise the waves and keep your head above the water. But for Keovisouk Dalasane, treading water will never be enough. His rapidly growing jobs website, 108 Jobs, may have arrived on the Lao market at just the right time, with the rise of the internet and the subsequent weakening of the print classifieds, but for Keo, this is all the more reason to stay on the alert for the constant threat of disruption.

And so the website – an easy-to-navigate, constantly updated list of employment vacancies in Laos – comes with a magazine of the same name, and now, an app to appeal to the many people who search the job market from their phones.

Keo has always had an eye to the future. Raised in Vientiane, he finished his schooling there, before heading overseas to study. In Thailand, he studied human resources, never imagining that two decades on, he would have a grip on the Vientiane employment market via his own start-up. He went on to study economics in Japan, where he started a PhD and decided, after envisaging his future post-doctorate, that he didn’t like what he saw, and dropped out in his third year.

But he’s adamant that his failure to finish has never been a problem.

“That’s one thing maybe I want to share with people. It doesn’t mean I spent two and a half years as a waste. I myself actually value the process a lot, not the end result,” he says.

“In between, you see what you learn, the journey is more important, and I learned a lot. I might not make it to a degree, but then all those things are still with me. How you analyse things, how you see things differently.”

By the time he returned to Vientiane in 2009, he was ready to settle down, start a family and find a niche ripe for a start-up enterprise.

Although the internet was still relatively new in Laos, he knew from his experience overseas that the sector would grow rapidly, and that internet-based services had the potential to turn a profit if the timing was right. 

“I worked for an online market research company in Japan that allowed me to travel to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, all these South East Asian cities, and I started to see how things would evolve in my own country.”

And so, in 2012, 108 Jobs was born – so named for the Lao expression meaning “tons of jobs”. “We decided to launch a website at that time, but we decided also to make it a little bit different from other websites, by launching together with a magazine,” he says.

“That could differentiate us. As for the competition with local newspaper we have the website as an edge.”

108 Jobs

“In Laos, you cannot be too specific, we must be ready for a broader audience, and even when we launched, the NGO sector already had their own website. But then what made us really, really different was we had this online platform, we had this magazine, which is freely available, plus the dedicated customer service team, that made it different, I think.”

There were other online job sites at the time, but 108 soon surged ahead, taking just two and a half years to become a success. The new app was, to him, a logical step along the way, tapping into the multitudes of people who not only live their daily lives through their phones, but also value the catchiness and cache of a cool new app.

But 108 Jobs goes beyond just appearances. Behind the user-friendly façade is a busy network of contacts and all kind of synergies when it comes to the employment market.

“We have customer lists, we have customer relationships, so what we do is we offer them whatever they need within the space of HR, not only job ads,” he says.

“Over the past two years, we’ve expanded into recruitment, we do payroll service … and we do recruitment outsourcing and all that extra stuff.”

Keo has also launched a companion website, Job Jib-Jib, aimed at the high-turnover hospitality sector and job-seekers wanting short-term employment.

“It’s another website which is simplified, very easy, you can just post three lines – what age, what time you work, for what. And we’re launching an app for that, and that’s going to be even more disruption than 108 Jobs.”

“It’s an untapped sector, where we can see a lot of things happening. It’s going to be very amazing where people can sign onto our app, and the restaurant owner can hunt for you. They are going to look for you, or you can apply and you can chat. This is happening in the west now.”

The team has also developed a restaurant- listing website, Spoon.la, and the synergies with 108 Jobs is obvious, while the name of the magazine has recently changed to just 108 Magazine, allowing it to spread beyond just the hospitality sector.

“The reason I am doing a lot of all this, I think, is we are in a very innovative space,” he says.

“Anyone can disrupt – see how we disrupted the existing classified business.  And we can always be disrupted by a new guy, and we want to be disrupting ourselves before anyone else comes in.”

So, while riding each new wave might look easy to an outsider, Keo says it’s important not to get too comfortable up there.

“We’re always on the top of the wave and seeing what’s coming,” he says.

“If we don’t stop, we will always see what’s coming next.”

 

Champa Meuanglao
Written by:
Sally Pryor
Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao,  official Lao Airlines in-flight magazine, 2017 May-June Edition