VIENTIANE -- Laos' economy is recovering from a pandemic slump as the opening of a passenger railway link with China helps bring back tourists, but the country risks becoming more reliant on its northern neighbor as a result.
In April, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) revised the 2023 real GDP growth rate forecast for Laos to 4%, an upgrade of 0.5 percentage point and 1.7 points higher than 2022. The growth rate had reached 4.7% in 2019, before the pandemic. The economy shrank in 2020 before expanding at the 2% range in 2021 and 2022.
