Manpower reaching military service age annually:
males: 73,167 (2005 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$10.7 million (2004)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
0.5% (2004)
Military - note:
Laos is one of the world's least developed countries; the Lao
People's Armed Forces are small, poorly funded, and ineffectively
resourced; there is little political will to allocate sparse funding
to the military, and the armed forces' gradual degradation is likely
to continue; the massive drug production and trafficking industry
centered in the Golden Triangle makes Laos an important narcotics
transit country, and armed Wa and Chinese smugglers are active on
the Lao-Burma border (2005)
Transnational Issues Laos
Disputes - international:
Southeast Asian states have enhanced border surveillance to check
the spread of avian flu; Laos and Thailand pledge to complete
demarcation of boundaries in 2005, while ongoing disputes over
squatters and boundary encroachment by Thailand including Mekong
River islets persist; in 2004 Cambodian-Laotian boundary commission
agrees to re-erect missing markers in two adjoining provinces;
concern among Mekong Commission members that China's construction of
dams on the Mekong River will affect water levels
Illicit drugs:
estimated cultivation in 2004 - 10,000 hectares, a 45% decrease
from 2003; estimated potential production in 2004 - 49 metric tons,
a significant decrease from 200 metric tons in 2003 (2005)
This page was last updated on 20 October, 2005
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