It has Southeast Asia’s smallest economy. Per capita incomes are only $990, a fraction of levels in nearby Thailand and Vietnam.
Yet Laos appears to have something American companies want. In recent weeks an unprecedented number of major U.S. companies — including some that previously paid Laos little heed — have touched down in the little, landlocked nation, hunting for investment opportunities in what remains one of the least-understood countries in Asia.
The trips included a delegation organized by the U.S.-Asean Business Council, its first such mission, earlier this month that featured some of the biggest names in Corporate America, including Coca-Cola, Chevron, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson. That trip followed a similar trip sponsored in late August by the U.S. embassy, the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand and the U.S. Commercial Service in Thailand that included Citibank and other American businesses.
To investors skeptical of Laos’s potential, and there are many, the trips were evidence American companies are straining too hard to tap frontier markets at a time of dismal prospects back home.
