Provincial Governor Oday Soudaphone signed off on decisions to repeal the 19 investment and land concession agreements.

These agreements had been signed two or more years previously without the investors taking action to implement them, head of the provincial Investment Promotion Division, Xayana Khotphouthone, told Vientiane Times yesterday.

Some projects had been granted as many as five to six years ago, he said, adding that the majority of the investors were local businesses.

An investor is required to take agreed actions to implement a project within 90 days after an agreement is signed, Xayana said, citing the relevant regulations.

In fact when an investor does not implement a project within 90 days, we can revoke the agreement, so we have already compromised, he added. Revoked projects include investments in tree planting and the mining of iron, lead and limestone among others.

The combined investment value of the 19 projects has not been calculated, but most projects amounted to about 41.4 billion kip (US$5 million) each, Xayana said. No single project exceeded $10 million as the provincial authorities had complied with the relevant investment regulations.

These regulations give each province a legitimate right to approve private investment projects not exceeding this amount, he said. Larger projects must be agreed to at the central level of government.

Qualified parties are now invited to apply for the rights to invest in such projects, Deputy Director of the provincial Planning and Investment Department, Mr Phousana Xaikosy said.

He said investors whose agreements were revoked planned to reserve the projects without intending to carry them out. The government’s reports emerged that businesses had laid claim to investment projects so they could sell them on at a later date.

Such issues had not been unique or confined to Khammuan province but had also occurred elsewhere.