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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
Foreign trade figures for Laos do not reflect the large
volume
of illegal trade in opium and other products, mostly with
Thailand;
some estimates put smuggling at half of all trade, legal
and
illegal. Although Laos continued to run a trade deficit
throughout
the 1980s and early 1990s, the volume of trade increased
substantially during the latter half of that period, as a
result of
increased production of exportable goods, the shift in
trade
patterns from the Soviet bloc to the convertible currency
bloc,
especially Thailand, and the removal of many regulations
on trade,
as the government continues to implement the orders of the
New
Economic Mechanism. Despite these improvements, however,
by 1990
exports still financed only about 40 percent of imports
(see
table 9, Appendix).
Data as of July 1994
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