State Owned Enterprises Reforms in the Power Sector of Lao PDR: The Case of Electricité du Laos

In the State-Owned Enterprises of the Lao PDR, the Government is promoting them towards commercialization to improve the economic and social welfare stability as a whole. In particular, the Electricité du Laos (EdL) which was established as an SOE in 1997, is currently on a strong effort of being reformed towards the commercialization after a realization of slow growth in profitability as well as the long-term of non-performing loans. Although EdL Reforming Program has been implemented for several years, the latest one was in 1997. This study is to describe the past events had been done so far in order to improve the EdL performance, by exploring the EdL reform process how they are developed and put into actions, especially the EdL restructuring in terms of financial and operational management which follow the general SOEs Reform agenda of GoL.