Assisted by nine labour recruitment enterprises, the ministry plans to add 276,828 people to the workforce over the next five years - equivalent to 55,365 workers a year, Mr Laoly told local media.

But officials estimate this figure will be insufficient to meet the domestic labour demand and say it will be necessary to import foreign workers to ensure steady economic growth.

To achieve the ambitious goal of converting agriculture-based Laos into an industrialised nation, the ministry will endeavour to balance its labour recruitment drive by reducing the proportion of the workforce employed in agriculture from 75.1 percent at present to 70 percent by 2015.

The number of people working in the industrial sector is set to increase from 5.5 percent to 7 percent, while manpower in the services sector is targeted for an increase from 19.5 percent to 23 percent over the same period.

In 1985, the proportion of the population working in agriculture was 89.2 percent, with industry and construction accounting for only one percent of the total workforce and services only 2.74 percent.

Since the Lao PDR was founded in 1975, almost 200,000 workers have been trained in various vocational skills and 1,041,661 Lao people have been recruited into jobs, Mr Laoly said.

In regards to social insurance, 11.74 percent of the population has access to social insurance, according to 2009 statistics when the nation's population was 6,127,910. The ministry plans to increase health insurance coverage to 50 percent of the entire population by 2015.

http://www.vientianetimes.org.la/FreeContent/Free_Ministry.htm

llX wrote on 2^nd Jan, 2011 at 3:47am:

yes I think it is ...judged on foreign investment,  but you'll never know it could change any time

Government try to stop slash and burn farming, and resettle some ethnic minority. But the ethnic minority in rural area need jobs, health care and education.