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Laos
Index
The total external debt grew by an average annual rate
of 22.5
percent from 1985 to 1989, slowing to 8.5 percent annually
through
1991. Debt to the nonconvertible currency area is large
but
difficult to quantify, in part because available
statistics often
use different ruble-to-dollar exchange rates. World Bank
figures
showed that between 68 and 77 percent of the external debt
was held
by countries from the nonconvertible currency area through
1991.
However, debt service to nonconvertible currency area
countries as
a percentage of total debt service decreased from about 33
percent
of the total in 1984 to less than 10 percent in 1990. Debt
service
as a ratio of total exports increased from 10.2 percent in
1984 to
a high of 16 percent in 1988, when it began a slow decline
to
nearly 10 percent in 1990, as exports increased (see
table 13,
Appendix). Although statistics on debt as a percentage of
GDP are
highly variable, sources agree that external debt
constituted
considerably more than 60 percent of GDP throughout the
1980s,
surpassing total GDP in 1987 or 1988.
Through mid-1987, Laos was able to meet its non-ruble
debt
repayment schedule mainly because many multilateral loans
had been
made on highly concessional terms--about 99 percent of all
longterm debt throughout the 1980s. Japan, which accounted for
approximately 33 to 45 percent of all debt to bilateral
donors in
the convertible currency area in the late 1980s, eased
debt
pressures by forgiving parts of its debt. In the
nonconvertible
currency area, the Soviet Union allowed trade deficits of
up to 400
percent of the value of imports annually; deficits at
year's end
were then converted into long-term loans. In 1991 the
Soviet Union
agreed to reschedule some of its long-run debt payments
and to
continue accepting repayments in commodities, rather than
switching
over to a hard currency basis as had previously been
agreed by the
Soviet-Lao Cooperation Commission.
Data as of July 1994
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