Laos Import Trade Data: $7.08B in 2023, Down 7.10%

Landlocked Laos Depends on Thailand for Nearly All Its Fuel

Laos imported $7.08 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 7.10% from $7.62 billion in 2022. Mineral fuels topped every import category at 19.00% of the total, worth $1.34 billion. Laos imported more than six billion liters of fuel between 2021 and 2024, an average of 127 million liters a month, with diesel making up the large majority of that volume, almost none of it produced domestically. Most of that fuel arrives from Thailand, with only about 10% sourced from Vietnam because of higher transport costs. As the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, Laos has no direct sea access of its own, so it depends entirely on cross-border pipelines, trucking routes and rail links through its neighbors just to keep fuel pumps running. That dependence has real consequences when something goes wrong on the Thai side. Refinery maintenance or export restrictions in Thailand have repeatedly triggered fuel shortages in Laos in recent years, since there is no domestic production to fall back on and no easy substitute supply route that can absorb a sudden shortfall.

Machinery and mechanical appliances ranked second at 11.30% ($799.78 million), and vehicles contributed 10.00% ($707.62 million). Electrical machinery added 8.37% ($592.30 million), and iron or steel articles supplied 4.72% ($333.82 million). Beverages, spirits and vinegar contributed 3.44% ($243.40 million), and plastics added 3.27% ($231.31 million). None of these categories come close to the scale of Laos's own energy dependence, but together they point to a country still importing most of the manufactured goods, vehicles and building materials it needs rather than producing them at home. Laos's own manufacturing base remains small relative to its neighbors, so almost anything beyond basic agricultural processing has to come from somewhere else.

Thailand and China Together Supply Most of What Laos Imports

Thailand supplied 41.67% of Laos's imports in 2023, worth $2.95 billion, more than any other single source. Multiple bridges across the Mekong River, including the original Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge linking Nong Khai to Vientiane, physically connect the two countries and carry the bulk of this trade by road. Additional bridges further south, linking other Thai and Lao provinces along the river, have added redundancy to that road network over the years, though Thailand's overall dominance of this trade relationship has remained largely unchanged. China ranked second at 29.81% ($2.11 billion), a share that has grown as the new China-Laos Railway has expanded what the two countries can move between them. A grouping labeled areas not elsewhere specified added 9.83% ($695.39 million), rounding out a top three that made up 81.31% of total import value.

Vietnam contributed 4.48% ($317.29 million), the roughly 10% of fuel imports plus other goods that arrive through Laos's other major land border. That share is small next to Thailand's, but it gives Laos at least a second supply route for the fuel it cannot produce itself, even if higher transport costs keep most volume flowing through Thailand instead. United States supplied 2.88% ($204.08 million), and Japan added 2.11% ($149.44 million). Australia contributed 1.14% ($80.70 million), and Singapore supplied 1.10% ($77.88 million). South Korea added 1.02% ($72.09 million), and Switzerland closed out the top ten at 0.67% ($47.56 million).

Imports Pulled Back From a 2022 Peak

Laos's import total climbed for three straight years before easing in 2023. It stood at $5.80 billion in 2019, then fell to $5.01 billion in 2020 as the pandemic slowed global trade. It recovered to $5.87 billion in 2021, then jumped to $7.62 billion in 2022, the high point of this five-year stretch. The 2023 figure of $7.08 billion, down 7.10% year over year, gave back only a modest share of that gain.

That pattern lines up closely with the export side of Laos's trade over the same years, where 2022 was also the peak before a sharper pullback in 2023. Global fuel and commodity prices both ran unusually high in 2022 before cooling the following year, and Laos, importing nearly all its own fuel, would have felt that price swing directly on its import bill. The smaller scale of the 2023 import pullback next to the much sharper export decline suggests fuel demand itself held up better than the prices Laos paid for it. A landlocked country still has to keep buses, trucks and motorbikes running regardless of what global fuel prices happen to be doing that year, which limits how much a price swing alone can move the import total compared with a more discretionary category.