The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced its plan to give Laos a 89 million USD loan to help the country’s socio-economic projects, said a representative of the local ADB office late last week.
The money will go to projects in 2009, including a higher education improvement project in Champasak university, a healthcare development plan, a small and midium sized mass communication scheme, a high voltage electricity network and a project on transportation in the eastern part of Laos.
In addition, the bank will conduct two more projects on improving Laos’ national statistics capacity and domestic labour market survey.
ADB has over the past time assisted the Lao government in various socio-economic development cooperation.
The Manila-based bank has provided a cumulative loan worth 1.23 billion USD and 109 million USD of official development assistance (ODA). In 2008 alone, ADB funded 3 non-refundable ODA projects with a combined total of 53 million USD, focusing mainly on environment, safe water and tourism development in localities along the Mekong River in Laos./.