7 court chambers discuss and validate the Draft Insolvency Form to support the implementation of the Law on Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy of Enterprises

Vientiane province, March 24-26, 2022. The Lao People’s Supreme Court, with support of the Lao PDR Competitiveness and Trade project (LCT), organized a validation meeting with the heads of the court’s chambers on the draft Insolvency Forms to support the implementation of the Law on Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy of Enterprises.

Mr. Bounkhouang Thavisack, the Vice President of the People’s Supreme Court, presided over the meeting, which was attended by the heads of seven court’s chambers (the Commercial Chamber, the Criminal Chamber, the Civil Chamber, the Administrative Chamber, the Family Chamber, the Juvenile Chamber, and the Labor Chamber), as well as representatives from Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Industry and Commerce, and Ministry of Planning and Cooperation.

The purpose of this meeting was to discuss and obtain comments/consent from the heads of court’s chambers on the eight newly drafted forms that elaborated Article 9 (Request file for the rehabilitation/bankruptcy), Article 28 (Consolidation of legal actions, dispute resolution or other actions), Article 50 (Confirmation of the rehabilitation plan by court), Article 51 (Notice of the order for implementation of the rehabilitation plan), Article 68 (Notice of offer on agreement for settlement to creditors), and Article 99 (Measures against owners, directors or executive officers of detour enterprise) of the Law on Enterprise Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy, as well as the 32 forms that had been revised based on the technical feedbacks obtained from the January technical meeting. Several suggestions for further improvement were made to the committee in order to ensure that the draft forms are complete, consistent with the law and that they are easy to understand and can be used to support the rehabilitation and bankruptcy proceedings.

Following this meeting, the responsible committee from the Lao People’s Supreme Court will convene an internal consultation to further revise the forms before presenting them to the council of judges in the fourth week of April. The committee expects to present the final draft insolvency forms to the senior management from the Lao People’s Supreme Court for endorsement in early May 2022.

Lao Competitiveness and Trade (LCT) project is a multi-donor project funded by Australian Aid, Irish Aid, USAID, and the World Bank Group, which implementing at the Department of Planning and Cooperation, Ministry of Industry and Commerce. LCT project aims to eliminate the barriers to private sector-led growth by improving the regulatory environment, lowering trade costs and raising firm-level competitiveness.