Tuesday, June 05, 2007

IMF predicts drop in Cambodian growth

05/06/2007
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The International Monetary Fund says tourism and garments continue to keep Cambodia's economy ticking over.

But it says growth is expected to drop more than a point to 9 per cent this year.

Jeremy Carter, an advisor with the IMF's Asian and Pacific Department, says growth could be further clipped in 2008 to around 7.5 percent as the garment sector comes under pressure from increased competition from Vietnam and China.

Cambodia's garment exports jumped 17 per cent to more than $US2.5 billionn 2006 but are not on track for the same meteoric growth this year.

Mr Carter says weather also remains an unpredictable force on Cambodia's agriculture production, but that revenue collection is improving.

He says Cambodia is able to cover its debt load, in part with donor aid and loans.

4 comments:

Khmer Young said...

Jobs capacity in Cambodia is existing in about three fields:
1. garment factory
2. tourism
3. agriculture (farming)

How about professional jobs reserving for those graduate students? It is no sight from government while the seniors and retired officials are still continuing their positions...

Now, jobs capacity creation has been subverted to soldiers training and OVOP.....

If we look at teaching profession, no body want to be now? This is a very sad future for Cambodia.

KY

Anonymous said...

To have projected 9% growth rate in 2007 is also a good performance. The question is its sustainability.

Agriculture is the most volatile factor for economic growth in Cambodia. It will be helpful if Cambodian government and other stakeholders build a developped irrigation system. We know that very good perfomance of agriculture last year is based on a suffiscient water supply.
The garment sector will suffer a daunting challenges from two big and dynamic countries: China and Vietnam in 2008. We can only profit from tourism if we have to preserve our beautiful temples and to diversify the sector. Tourists they can not only just come to see always Angkor Wat, the same thing for 50 years, 100 years.

Cambodia has to prepare for it. The rule is " Cambodians have to think more and work harder". High sacrifice, high value.

Nak Angkor
Phnom Penh

Anonymous said...

Agreed, 12:33, and yes, we need
to sustained our overall economic
growth, but with new competitions,
I would expect our growth to
fluctuate a bit. Certainly, we
need to maintain quality of our
goods and we need to expand our
agriculture sector as fast as we
can. Currently, our agriculture is
only working on less than 20% of
its full capacity.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I don't know we use only 20% of its full capacity. Thanks for the information. But, for me, it seems to be too low.

Nak Angkor
Phnom Penh