Thursday, September 24, 2009

Asian Countries Suffer From Weak Institutions: ADB

By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
23 September 2009


Asia is suffering from a deficit of governance, public management and rule of law, in large part due to corruption, a senior Asian Development Bank official said, urging institutional capacity building for countries like Cambodia to climb out of poverty.

“Our advice to the government is to continue the momentum of institution-building,” said Rajat Nag, managing director-general of the ADB, in an exclusive interview with VOA last week. “We recognize that these take time. We recognize that it is not only important to have the right laws on the books, but they have to be implemented fairly, and we are working with the government of Cambodia as indeed elsewhere to continue that process.”

Cambodia has spent almost ten years drafting on an anti-corruption law, but it remains unfinished. Efforts are underway meanwhile to help the government set up an anti-corruption body.

“These things are not done overnight,” Nag said. “These things are also, quite frankly, not done in public. I think we should work with the government, and we do talk to them very frankly, but these are done as part of a long-run institutional reform progress which is continuing.”

The ADB believes that investing in health and education is also important and must take place side by side so that Cambodia can bridge the widening gap between the rich and poor.

“In a country like Cambodia, we emphasize very much investment in health and education, but also I think the government needs to look at the issue of rising inequality, rising disparity,” Nag said. “You’ve got people who are doing extremely well and people who are falling below the poverty line and falling through the cracks.”

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The curruptions in it self is the government. Once there is changes in the government. Curruptions will fade and the anti-curruption drake will pass into law.

The country is so currupted that soon like southern of part of cambodia became "south vietnam". That was due to crookedness of curruption.

Will vietnam change the name of cambodia into something else. Its possible if curruption is not stopped soon.

Anonymous said...

The Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen Khmer Rouge government would denial curruption accusation by ADB.

The Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen Khmer Rouge government never admit to their guilt.

Anonymous said...

What a shame to Cambodia and how ridicule the guy of ADB ask the corrupted government to draft an anti-corruption law.They are mostly crrok. they cannot make or create something to kill themself.
It's so obvious so not a lot people can see it.
Better pray to God to send someones else to do it.

Anonymous said...

Corruptions start from the top.
This is why the corruption law was never pass.
Don't count on this unforeseen circumstances to go away any time soon.
The Cambodian Gov't is enjoying the lavish and luxuries life style courtesy of the US Aid. Why pass anti-corruption law?