The Lao Wildlife Conservation Association (LWCA) is carrying out a wildlife conservation and capacity building project to help protect wild animals in Laos.
Upgrade of Xayaboury-Luang Prabang Road Makes Slow Progress
Upgrade of the 114-km National Road No. 4B from Hongsa district in Xayaboury province to Chomphet district in Luang Prabang province is proceeding slowly but is expected to be completed on schedule.
Mountainside Rocket Festival Tourist Site Set to Launch
A new tourist attraction Phou Kangbangfay will be officially opened next month in Phoukoud district, Xieng Khuang province, to honour the long established rocket festival there.
Developer Set to Install Savan-Laobao Railway Corridor Posts
Giant Rail Company Limited (GRCL) on Friday signed a contract with a Lao company to install railway route corridor posts for a planned line linking Laos’ central province of Savannakhet to the Vietnamese border.
China-Laos Investment Pact Applies In Casino Tiff, Court Says
New York — An investor from the Chinese territory of Macau that sued the Laotian government for effectively stealing its casino had its arbitration against the country resuscitated by Singapore’s highest court on Thursday, with the judges finding that Macanese companies are protected by China’s bilateral investment treaty with Laos even though both countries contended otherwise.
Sanum Investments Ltd., a Macanese entity with a Dutch parent company, struck a special tax deal with the Laotian government in 2007 as part of the process of building a gambling resort near the country’s border with Thailand. The company demanded arbitration after disputes over taxes and ownership came up, and a Singaporean tribunal found in 2013 that it had the authority to hear the dispute because the once Portuguese territory of Macau had become part of China in 1999.
Laos challenged the arbitrators’ decision, however, saying letters it exchanged with China in 2014 proved that neither country meant for their treaty to cover Macau when they signed in in 1993. A judge of Singapore’s high court accepted the letters and ruled in favor of Laos, but five judges of the Court of Appeal reversed him on Thursday, saying the letters didn’t outweigh a bedrock principle of international law known as the moving treaty frontier rule.
“In our judgment, there is nothing in the text, the objects and the purposes of the [China]-Laos BIT, or in the circumstances of its conclusion, that points to an intention to displace the MTF rule such that it would lead to the conclusion that the BIT does not apply to Macau,” the judges wrote.
The Laotian government has argued that documents including a 1987 declaration by China and Portugal and a 2001 report by the World Trade Organization supported the view that its BIT with China didn’t suddenly extend to Macau. The 2014 exchange of diplomatic letters, which it said took place after informal communications, simply confirmed what had been the case all along, Laos argued.
The city-state’s top court found otherwise, however. Both parties accepted that customary international law holds that a state’s treaty obligations stretch as far as its sovereignty does, even when its borders change, the judgment said. But the judges said the text of the China-Laos BIT didn’t purport to change that, nor did Laos “otherwise establish” that the rule didn’t apply as it normally would.
Although a lower court saw the 2014 letters as simply confirming what had been clear, the Court of Appeal said the older evidence had supported Sanum’s stance. Accordingly, the judges said, the 2014 letters should be granted “no weight.”
The function of evidence that came to light after arbitration starts, they wrote, “is to corroborate and to explain. To the extent that it contradicts what has been established by the pre-existing position to give the party seeking to rely on it an evidential advantage in its case, it should not be admitted.”
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon wrote the judgment of the court, joined by Judges of Appeal Chao Hick Tin, Andrew Phang Boon Leong and Judith Prakash, and Judge Quentin Loh.
Sanum is represented by Alvin Yeo SC, Koh Swee Yen, Monica Chong Wan Yee and Mak Shin Yi of WongPartnership LLP.
Laos is represented by Cavinder Bull SC, Lim Gerui, Darryl Ho Ping and Eunice Chan Swee En of Drew & Napier LLC. The country was represented in arbitration by David J. Branson.
J. Christopher Thomas QC and Professor Locknie Hsu were amici curiae.
The case is Sanum Investments Ltd. v. Government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, civil appeal numbers 139/2015 and 167/2015 and judgment number [2016] SGCA 57, in the Singapore Court of Appeal.
Written by: Jack Newsham
Editing by: Bruce Goldman
Source: Law360
BREAKING: Suspected Perpetrators of Heist Near Indochina Bank Identified as Colombian
Lao Police are of the belief that they have identified the suspected perpetrators of the Lao Freight Forwarder heist near Indochina Bank yesterday afternoon.
Three men of Colombian citizenship have been identified (see picture – courtesy of Thai TV Channel 3) as the culprits of the robbery near Indochina Bank of the Lao Freight Forwarder finance employee. This is contrary to many rumors and hearsay that they were of a middle eastern descent.
The employee has confirmed that the man depicted at the top was the one who had distracted her while his accomplice stole the money. The other two have not yet been confirmed.
Police say that the suspects traveled to Laos via the Kunming-Vientiane flight. They landed at Wattay Airport on September 27th, 12:30. Police are aware of the names of the suspects and are confident that they will apprehend them.
Citizens are urged to stay clear of these men. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the proper authorities.
Laotian Times Reporters
10:23am, September 29th, 2016
Lao President Receives Credentials of UAE Non-Resident Ambassador
VIENTIANE, 28th September — President Bounnhang Vorachith of the Democratic People’s Republic of Laos, has received the credentials of Khaled Ibrahim Abdul Aziz Shuhail, UAE Ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the Non-Resident Ambassador in Laos, during an official ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Vientiane.
Unitel Reaches $1 Billion Revenue Figure In Laos
Unitel, the brand name of Viettel in Laos, reached US$1 billion in cumulative revenue in seven years of operation in the country.
Mobile TV service of Unitel. The company has installed 4,000 base transceiver stations and 23,000km of fibre-optic cable across Laos to bring telecom services to all districts in Laos and 95 per cent of its population.
Being the second overseas brand name of Viettel, after Metfone in Cambodia, Unitel has rapidly become the number one mobile network provider in Laos. It made a cumulative profit of more than $300 million.
Unitel has 2.5 million subscribers, accounting for 47 per cent of mobile market share and 35 per cent of broadband market share.
The company has installed 4,000 base transceiver stations and 23,000km of fibre-optic cable across Laos to bring telecom services to all districts in Laos and 95 per cent of its population. In particular, the company has been providing the 4G service since June last year.
Unitel has helped to change the telecommunication market significantly with mobile use increasing from 18 per cent in 2009 to 68 per cent in 2016. It has created jobs for more than 4,000 locals, while an additional 20,000 indirect jobs have been created through their collaborator programmes and partners.
According to a report made public in April this year by Brand Finance, an independent intangible asset valuation consultancy based in the United Kingdom, Unitel is the number one effective telecommunication brand name in ASEAN. Its brand value increased by 106 per cent compared with 2015, reaching $132 million.
Till mid-September 2016, Viettel had increased its foreign subscribers to 26 million in Laos, Cambodia, East Timor and Cameroon, as well as Haiti, Mozambique, Burundi, Peru and Tanzania, bringing the total to 90 million subscribers (including Viet Nam). The company has been listed among the top 30 telecommunication groups with the highest number of subscribers in the world according to statistics of GSMA Intelligence.
The company earned $493.8 million in revenue from its overseas markets in the first six months of this year, a year-on-year increase of 13 per cent.
In the domestic market, Viettel recently erected a mobile base transceiver station to serve 1,000 workers working to drill a tunnel in Ca Hill. Since the hill is located in a forest, the military-owned company had to install 3km of fibre-optic cable.
Work on the 13.4km tunnel between the central provinces of Phu Yen and Khanh Hoa began in late 2012. Designed and built by Vietnamese engineers and workers, it is the second longest tunnel in the country after Hai Van.
“It is Viettel’s social responsibility to serve engineers and workers involved in a national project,” Trinh Ai Duong, deputy director of Viettel Phu Yen, said.
Source: Vietnam Net