"Beyond the office buildings and newly paved city streets clogged with expensive cars, most Cambodians still toil away for as little as 50 US cents a day, and a widening wealth gap has alarmed some observers, who say growth figures rarely represent reality."
PHNOM PENH, Feb 18 (AFP): Under great plumes of dust in Cambodia's Kompong Speu province, heavy trucks and earth movers level vast rice fields while billboards advertise factories, sprawling condominium communities and smoked-glass office towers.
This once dry, flat farmland south of the capital Phnom Penh is riding the crest of a development wave that is helping to pull impoverished Cambodia out of financial ruin.
Economic growth has surged ahead at around 9.0 per cent a year since 2000, analysts say, driven in part by an unprecedented construction boom, as well as rising garment exports and a vibrant tourism sector that saw 1.7 million visitors arrive in Cambodia last year.
"Economic growth here has been very robust over the past few years and the economy is doing overall quite well," said John G Nelmes, the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) resident representative in Cambodia.
Growth in 2006 has been projected at between 9.5 and slightly above 10 per cent, but economists say they expect this to shrink slightly over the medium term-to between 6.0 and 8.0 per cent - - and warn that Cambodia's apparent financial upturn rarely benefits the country's poor.
Some 35 per cent of Cambodia's 14 million people are mired in poverty after decades of civil war and government mismanagement that has led to rampant corruption at almost every level of business and politics.
"Improvements in good governance and addressing corruption are key to sustaining high and good quality economic growth," Nelmes said.
Beyond the office buildings and newly paved city streets clogged with expensive cars, most Cambodians still toil away for as little as 50 US cents a day, and a widening wealth gap has alarmed some observers, who say growth figures rarely represent reality.
"Even though we have seen the growth of economy, the gap between the rich and the poor remains big," said Kek Galabru, president of the leading Cambodian rights group Licadho.
This once dry, flat farmland south of the capital Phnom Penh is riding the crest of a development wave that is helping to pull impoverished Cambodia out of financial ruin.
Economic growth has surged ahead at around 9.0 per cent a year since 2000, analysts say, driven in part by an unprecedented construction boom, as well as rising garment exports and a vibrant tourism sector that saw 1.7 million visitors arrive in Cambodia last year.
"Economic growth here has been very robust over the past few years and the economy is doing overall quite well," said John G Nelmes, the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) resident representative in Cambodia.
Growth in 2006 has been projected at between 9.5 and slightly above 10 per cent, but economists say they expect this to shrink slightly over the medium term-to between 6.0 and 8.0 per cent - - and warn that Cambodia's apparent financial upturn rarely benefits the country's poor.
Some 35 per cent of Cambodia's 14 million people are mired in poverty after decades of civil war and government mismanagement that has led to rampant corruption at almost every level of business and politics.
"Improvements in good governance and addressing corruption are key to sustaining high and good quality economic growth," Nelmes said.
Beyond the office buildings and newly paved city streets clogged with expensive cars, most Cambodians still toil away for as little as 50 US cents a day, and a widening wealth gap has alarmed some observers, who say growth figures rarely represent reality.
"Even though we have seen the growth of economy, the gap between the rich and the poor remains big," said Kek Galabru, president of the leading Cambodian rights group Licadho.
3 comments:
This is typical of a dictorship communist style husenims. There's no middle class. The rich gets rich off the poor, while the poor is trying to survive day to day.
Wrong, there are many middle
classes made everyday in Cambodia.
You just have to know what is in
demand to make it happens for
yourself.
How you conside a middleclases ?
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