Laos’s past is its present

Laos village banks are making progress, despite facing suspicion

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Landlocked and economically tiny, insulated from an outside world it fears and mistrusts, Laos is a very unusual country. Its suspicions of the outsider, which locals wear openly on their faces, are baked in. They recall a century of suffocating French rule, shudder at the memory of American bombs raining down during the Vietnam War, and cast nervous eyes north, to a resurgent and intimidating China.

This fear of the unknown has shaped the country’s economic strategy – such as it is – and helps to explain why, even now, so many Laotian people and businesses struggle to find ways to access credit, get loans and, in many cases, open bank accounts.