A WORKSHOP on Market Information Systems (MIS) for agriculture and forest products in Laos was held last week in Luang Prabang.
  The workshop, which was hosted by the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI), sorts to address the lack of market information available to people in the agricultural and forestry sector.
  It was supported by The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Lao-Swedish Upland Agriculture and Forestry Research Program (LSUAFRP), the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and Lux-Development S.A.
Participants consisted of companies, traders, government officials and staff of development organisations. Over 200 participants attended the workshop came from nine provinces.
   The rationale behind the workshop is to address the lack of market information available in the agriculture and forestry sector that creates a bottleneck for economic development. Many farmers find the difficult to link to markets as they lack information on prices, quality requirements and markets. It is also difficult to promote national exports if potential foreign buyers cannot get information on resources available in Laos.
Other countries in the region have benefited from various forms of market information systems. Such systems are often reliant on the combined efforts of various stakeholders, including primary producers, traders and the Government.
   In order to develop such a system in Laos the workshop sought to identify market information needs and issues in Laos; share experiences, concepts and expectations on the impacts of MIS; and identify and agree on follow-up activities that will lead to the implementation of a functioning MIS at district, province and national levels.
Souvanhpheng Phommasane, NTFPs Marketing Training Advisor at NAFRI, said that the successes at the workshop were that a great number of the organisations involved provided their ideas and experiences on MIS, and built on the circulation of the first concept note on the topic, which as released in April this year.
   Twelve short presentations on cases from various provinces in Laos were also presented during the workshop.
“From these cases, a few common elements seem to emerge,” said Souvanhpheng.
Some of these common elements, according to Souvanhpheng, were:
Identifying products, identifying traders, mapping out marketing chains, overviews of market information per province or district. Linking farmers to markets, strengthening farmer groups, clustering villages, exchange visits and study tours to traders in neighboring countries, identifying options for adding value by planned production, improving quality, processing, and storage and making business plans.
Agreements between stakeholders to circulate market information