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Recently, Laos’s government passed a law on chemicals management which has been under preparation for a couple of years. The final legal text hasn’t been released yet. The draft of the law was published and consulted in late 2015 by the competent authority, Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MOIC).
The draft law categorizes chemicals in Laos into 4 types:
Type 1 chemicals are defined as “extremely dangerous”. Business activities involving type 1 chemicals are prohibited, except for research and development purposes.
Type 2 chemicals are defined as “very dangerous”. These chemicals are allowed to be manufactured, imported, exported and stored only if they are approved by the competent authorities. Also they should be regulated according to other relevant regulations.
Type 3 chemicals are defined as “moderately dangerous”. These chemicals also need to be approved by competent authorities before being manufactured, imported, exported and stored.
Type 4 chemicals are defined as “slightly dangerous”. The industry is allowed to manufacture, import, and export and store these chemicals without approval from competent authorities. However, all related activities should be notified to MOIC.
In spite of this categorization of hazardous chemicals in Laos, the law isn’t supported by a detailed inventory which provides information on types of specific hazardous chemicals, like Thailand’s Ministry of Industry offers. Laos’s law specifies 16 physical hazards, 10 health hazards and 2 environmental hazards used in the GHS system to define hazardous chemicals. However, GHS hasn’t been implemented in Laos and related GHS building blocks have not been specified. MOIC is expected to draft another regulation on the implementation of GHS.
The law also outlines the concept of new chemicals and registration. Unlike the common definition of new chemicals adopted by other countries like Japan, South Korea and Thailand, (the countries define “new” chemicals as all chemicals that haven’t been previously sold, marketed or registered in the domestic market), Laos’s chemical management law defines new chemicals as literally “new” chemicals which are created or discovered for the first time. Besides the unusual definition, Laos doesn’t have a national chemicals inventory yet, so new chemical registration is still not a major concern for industry at the moment.
Although the draft law was drawn up by MOIC, a National Committee for Chemicals comprising several government authorities will be established for the purpose of management of all types of chemical related activities in Laos. The Committee will consist of representatives from MOIC, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
