OREANDA-NEWS. JALUX Inc. and Toyota Tsusho Corporation reached an agreement with the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MPWT) of Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos) to extend its agreement for another five years to continue managing and operating the international terminal at the Wattay International Airport in the capital city of Vientiane.

JALUX and Toyota Tsusho, in partnership with the Lao Airports Authority (LAA), established the Lao-Japan Airport Terminal Services Co., Ltd. (L-JATS), which is an international terminal management and operation company, in Laos in April 1999. L-JATS is the sole airport terminal management and operation company outside of Japan run by Japanese companies. JALUX and Toyota Tsusho have managed and operated the international terminal at the Wattay International Airport for 15 years via a public-private partnership with the Laotian government.

L-JATS has contributed to the development of the Wattay International Airport, which is the gateway to Laos. Thanks to the cooperation from the Laotian government, L-JATS has steadily expanded the number of passengers, and the number of arrivals and departures, while also pouring energies into improving services. The number of international passengers using Wattay International Airport annually rose from 100,000 in 1999, the year in which operation and management was started, to 790,000 passengers in 2013. Over the next five years, this number is expected to reach 1 million passengers.

The extension of this agreement reflects the successful performance of JALUX and Toyota Tsusho thus far, as well as the positive results of the public-private partnership initiative and the development of friendly relations between the governments of Laos and Japan.

JALUX and Toyota Tsusho aim to further expand this business and also engage in a wide range of measures to continue to contribute to the development of Laos going forward.