Laos

Laos: Decade-Old Defense Figures Obscure Current Capability

Laos's gross domestic product reached $16.5 billion in 2024, per World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI), with per-capita output of $2,123.98 across a population of roughly 7.8 million the same year. Government debt is projected at 74.6% of GDP in 2026, per IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) data, and foreign exchange reserves stood at $2.21 billion in 2024, per World Bank WDI.

Military expenditure data are a significant gap here: SIPRI's Military Expenditure Database lists $22.8 million for 2013, equal to 0.19% of GDP on SIPRI's own GDP series for that same year. Both figures are now well over a decade old and should not be treated as describing current Laotian defense spending. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities (COW NMC) dataset counts 29,000 active personnel as of 2022 and assigns Laos a Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of 0.0005687821 for that year — a more recent, if still dated, measure of material capacity.

V-Dem's 2025 data put the electoral democracy index at 0.135 and the liberal democracy index at 0.11 on V-Dem's 0-to-1 scale, with state capacity scoring 0.346 — the highest of the three governance readings for Laos in this dataset.

Energy figures from Our World in Data show primary energy use of 0.2787 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation of 52.31 terawatt-hours in 2024.

Data gaps

The milex figures are the most significant gap in this profile: both the $22.8 million spending level and the 0.19% GDP share date to 2013, twelve years before this briefing, and offer no insight into current defense outlays. That ratio, in any case, is drawn from SIPRI's own 2013 GDP accounting and should not be compared with the World Bank GDP figure used elsewhere above. Oil and gas production are both listed at zero, dated 2016. The 74.6% debt-to-GDP figure is an IMF projection for 2026 rather than a confirmed outturn, and should be read with that caveat.

Sources: World Bank World Development Indicators; IMF World Economic Outlook; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; Correlates of War National Material Capabilities; V-Dem v15; Our World in Data (Energy).