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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
As of mid-1994, Laos had the smallest defense budget in
Southeast Asia, but it also is one of the region's poorest
countries. Since 1975, Laos has relied heavily on
Vietnamese and
Soviet military aid; the loss of this aid by the early
1990s has
affected military capabilities.
There is little available information on the defense
budget
(see
table 16, Appendix). In the late 1970s and early
1980s, Laos
undertook a concerted effort to eliminate internal armed
resistance
and was preoccupied with a continuous border conflict with
Thailand
(see The Confrontational Relationship with Thailand
, this
ch.). In
the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, a noticeable
improvement
in the security situation, marked by better relations with
its
neighbors and a reduced internal security threat from
resistance
groups, enabled the leadership to reduce the defense
budget. In
1992 military expenditures--which included expenditures
for public
security--were approximately US$102.2 million, or 11.7
percent of
the gross domestic product
(GDP--see Glossary). In 1993
military
expenditures had increased slightly to about US$104.9
million,
approximately 12.4 percent of the US$1.3 billion estimated
GDP.
Data as of July 1994
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