Bangkok - Land-locked Laos plans to open a stock market by next year in Vientiane, state radio reports said Tuesday. Laos' central bank governor Phouphet Khamphounvong said a stock market was necessary for the long-term investment climate of the country, said Radio Vientiane in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok.
The Lao bourse will initially be under central bank management before becoming fully independent in 2010.
Laos, a land-locked country half the size of France, has been under communist rule since December 1976.
A former member of the Soviet bloc, the South-East Asian nation with a population of less than 6 million was forced to open up to foreign investment and liberalize trade in the late 1980s after the Soviet Union's collapse.
There are few large-scale private enterprises in Laos, other than foreign investments in mining and hydro-electriticy projects.
