Cambodia Inaugurates China-funded Road in N Provinces

2012-08-08
Xinhua

Cambodia on Wednesday inaugurated a 128-kilometer China-funded national road No. 62 in an effort to boost social and economic development in northern provinces.

The road, from Kampong Thom province's Kampong Svay district to the provincial town of Preah Vihear province, cost about 52 million U.S. dollars under a soft loan from the Government of China and was built by the Shanghai Construction (Group) General Company.

Prime Minister Hun Sen and Pan Guangxue, Chinese ambassador to Cambodia, presided over the inauguration ceremony, which was attended by top government officials, diplomatic corps, some 10, 000 locals and students.

69 Per Cent Of Cambodia's Roads Paved With Tar As Of Last Year [... thanks to foreign aid]

PHNOM PENH, April 17 (Bernama) -- Some 3,881 kilometers or 69 percent of Cambodia's 5,604-kilometer national roads have been paved with tar as of December last year, according to reports of the Ministry of Public Work and Transport on Monday.

The reports contributed the country's achievements in building roads and bridges largely to assistance from China, Japan, South Korea, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank, Xinhua news agency reported.

China is the largest provider of grants and loans for Cambodia's infrastructure development.

China Leads in Assistance to Cambodia

2012-03-17
Xinhua

China is the largest donor in infrastructure development assistance to Cambodia, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Keat Chhon said Saturday.

"China is the No. 1 donor for infrastructure development here, and Japan comes at the second," he told reporters after opening a regional economic forum.

He said that China's aid on infrastructure is vital for Cambodia to boost its long-term economic growth.

ADB provides Cambodia $69 mil. to improve provincial roads

February 23, 2012

PHNOM PENH (Kyodo) -- The Asian Development Bank has provided $69 million for Cambodia to make major upgrades of provincial roads in some of the country's poorest provinces, according to an ADB statement Wednesday.

The Provincial Roads Improvement Project, financed by a $52 million loan from ADB Special Funds and a $17 million loan and grant from the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience, will be used to rehabilitate about 150 kilometers of unpaved provincial roads in Kampong Chhnang, Kampong Speu, Prey Veng and Svay Rieng provinces.

"Efficient transport is critical for economic growth. This initiative will provide safe, cost-effective and year-round access to markets, employment centers and social services for poor and remote communities," ADB Vice President Stephen P. Groff said during signing for the assistance.

Cambodia Needs Business Infrastructure: IMF Chief

Ros Sothea, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Monday, 19 July 2010

“To make progress, clearly the problem of infrastructure is the highest importance.”

The head of the International Monetary Fund has advised Cambodia to strengthen infrastructure that could buffer it from future economic turbulence.

“Cambodia is in a very critical situation,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn told reporters last week, following a two-day Asian economic summit in Daejoen, South Korea.

Strauss-Kahn had warned that many Asian countries need to strengthen their economic policies to protect them from future economic shocks, as economic officials met for the Asia 21 meeting. But Cambodia remains in a difficult situation, he said.

“To make progress, clearly the problem of infrastructure is the highest importance,” he said, “and it has to be stressed because trade and communication are strongly linked with infrastructure.”

Strauss-Kahn also advised increasing trade within Asian countries, so as not to rely on the West for consumers.

Cambodia is one of the smallest countries in Asia and is reliant on exports for economic growth. That made it vulnerable to the 2008 economic crisis, when orders from Western countries, especially the US, fell.

Analysts say Cambodia’s weak infrastructure limits its competitiveness. And the World Economic Forum 2010 report listed Cambodia as one of the worst countries in ease of trade.

“The government has been working on it, since infrastructure is the development priority of Cambodia,” said Sun Sanisith, secretary general of the National Bank of Cambodia, who attended the conference in Daejoen.

Meanwhile, Asian financial experts also warned of financial systems that will require more cooperation among Asian nations. Experts from South Korea, China and Japan all said the banking sectors of Asian countries can be better bolstered through increased capital reserves and better cooperation among local banks.

Cambodia Opens First Highway Bridge

2010-06-24
New Tang Dynasty

The Cambodian Prime Minister officially opened the country's first highway bridge in Phnom Penh on Thursday.

With the help of the city's mayor and thousands of onlookers, Prime Minister Hun Sen cut a ceremonial ribbon on top of the structure.

Locals at the ceremony shared their excitement.

[Him Sokha, Teacher]:
"I am very happy that we have the first sky bridge, which we never had before, and our Khmer people can walk and drive on it."

[Sam Vanna, Village Chief]:
"It is our Khmer pride that we have the first sky bridge, it is a tremendous bridge for our country and I still live to see it. I will bring my wife, children and grandchildren to walk or drive across it later on today to remember the opening day."

The bridge cost over 6 million dollars and was created to help ease traffic congestion in the city.

The bridge is 1,010 feet long, 17 feet high, and about 47 feet wide. It was completed last month and took one year to build.

China, Cambodia sign MOU for cooperation on road, bridge infrastructure

June 24, 2010
Xinhua

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed on Thursday by China and Cambodia to further strengthen the cooperation on road and bridge and other infrastructure development.

Cambodia's Public Works and Transport Minister Tram Iv Tek and Chinese Vice Transport Minister Gao Hongfeng signed the MOU on behalf of their own countries.

Speaking at the ceremony, Tram Iv Tek said the signing of the MOU reflects "our two countries will further strengthen and develop the cooperation on road and bridge infrastructure, information exchange and experience sharing."

Tram Iv Tek also said that the construction of road and bridge will help to promote the economic and social development of the Royal Government and its integration into the regional economy, as well as the poverty reduction.

He, at the same time, thanked Chinese government for its substantial assistance to help Cambodia in road, bridge and other infrastructure development, as well as the training of human resources. "So far, China has built three bridges and 1,500 km long roads for Cambodia, worth nearly 1 billion U.S. dollars. Cambodian people and the Government will not forget China's help," he added.

Gao Hongfeng said China and Cambodia have developed a bilateral and multilateral cooperation in various fields on the basis of mutual trust and mutual support. The economic and trade cooperation between the two countries have strengthened and developed rapidly in recent years, especially in transport cooperation. He said that China will continue to cooperate with Cambodia and provide relevant support and assistance in an effort to improve the transport infrastructure to benefit the two peoples.

Gao Hongfeng believed that the bilateral cooperation will be broader with the joint efforts of both sides.

Development can debilitate

Vendors cross the border in Banteay Meanchey province’s Poipet town last year. A professor from Thailand’s Shinawatra University says new research indicates infrastructure projects such as Poipet’s Cambodian-Thai Friendship Bridge can facilitate trafficking. (Photo by: Steve Finch)

Monday, 10 May 2010
David Boyle
The Phnom Penh Post

In the supermarket, what can we find? Is there anything from Cambodia? There are some natural products packed in Cambodia. But the majority of the stuff is Australian or Thai, or some stuff is Chinese and some stuff is Vietnamese and so on. Almost nothing is from Cambodia.

John Walsh warns that infrastructure projects can exacerbate human trafficking

Though often touted by the government and donors as evidence of development, infrastructure projects can in some cases negatively affect the Cambodian economy while simultaneously fuelling human trafficking, said John Walsh, a professor at the school of management at Thailand’s Shinawatra University, at a regional conference on migration last week.

On the sidelines of the gathering, dubbed the “International Conference on Mobility Patterns of Cambodian and Other Nationals in the South East Asia Region”, Walsh elaborated on his research into Cambodian migrant workers.

Walsh drew from interviews with 59 Cambodian migrant workers employed in jobs he described as “3D” – dangerous, dirty and disgusting. The interviews revealed that the workers gained little long-term financial benefit from their jobs in Thailand, and that they faced both isolation and discrimination.

Could you explain in a bit more detail how you think major infrastructure projects can exacerbate human trafficking?

Infrastructure, insofar as it means roads and railways and civil aviation and so forth – in this case it means mainly roads – it’s widely thought among the [Asian Development Bank] and the kind of international development thinking people that such infrastructure will inevitably help aggregate economic activity. But there is much less knowledge specifically about who would benefit and who would not benefit – I mean, who would suffer from it.

If we look at the [Cambodian-Thai Friendship Bridge in Poipet town, Banteay Meanchey province], this road is clearly facilitating migration because it’s just making it easier for people to go from one place to another much more quickly. And since we now have greater ownership of personal transportation like motorbikes and so on, people can go seasonally from one country to another and then go back for the harvest season or so forth, so that’s facilitating what’s going on. Since human trafficking is also clearly occurring across the border, then it is abetting human trafficking. That’s just one of the unintended consequences of the infrastructure development.

You think of a big, nice, new road and bridge, you don’t think of that as the standard avenue through which people would be trafficked.

But if, as so many people here have been arguing, there are established authority figures who have been facilitating human trafficking, then it makes sense for them to use the roads over which they’ve got control rather than taking them through the roads and the jungles through which they don’t have control.

What are the economic consequences of the Poipet Friendship Bridge?

Last night, I went to the Lucky Supermarket, because like all business-teaching people I have to see what’s being sold rather than go to the tourist places. In the supermarket, what can we find? Is there anything from Cambodia?

There are some natural products packed in Cambodia. But the majority of the stuff is Australian or Thai, or some stuff is Chinese and some stuff is Vietnamese and so on. Almost nothing is from Cambodia. OK, now, in a situation where very few Cambodian firms can produce and distribute food items on a reliable, high-quality basis, then clearly Lucky Supermarket as a representative of retail is going to get its stuff from overseas. So it’s easier, presumably, to get stuff from Bangkok and drive it across the Poipet border point than it is to try and get someone up-country in Cambodia for the same products.

So in this case, again, the local people, through lack of their own capacity and ability in business and so forth, are going to lose out, and the larger producers – through economy of scale, economy of scope, all this kind of thing – are going to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the road. But that’s a one-way thing because coming to Thailand you’ll find very few Cambodian products coming the other way.

So it’s not like it’s an equal exchange. It seems, so far as I can tell, to be going just in one direction principally at the moment. Cambodia, meanwhile, is exporting labour, and the research that we did said that remittances are so low that they’re not actually making a difference for the families on a day-to-day basis.

But even if the money is just going into, for instance, paying off debts, surely they will eventually pay off that loan and thus benefit?

Yeah, but is it a loan that is going to improve their lives for the long term? Are they buying livestock, are they building a farm or are they just repairing a house in which they have to live in any case? Or is it just a loan to meet living expenses or educational expenses and so on? The sense that I got from our research was that the loans are not making a qualitative difference to peoples’ lives. They’re enabling the families to keep going, but without necessarily improving themselves.

Interview by David Boyle

Cambodia Takes to the Roads in Building Spree

January 18, 2010
THOMAS FULLER
The New York Times

Paving Over Cambodia's Violent Past
With financing from several foreign governments and the Asian Development Bank, hundreds of miles of roads are being completed and many more hundreds are under construction in Cambodia.

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA — Bullet by bullet, workers removed the detritus of Cambodia’s past. They pulled 300 land mines and 30,000 rounds of ammunition from the red dirt and then laid down a thick layer of asphalt. Today, what would pass for a very ordinary road in wealthier parts of the world is precious pavement for a country motoring toward prosperity and trying to leave its bloody past behind.

Last month, the government inaugurated the newly refurbished Routes 5 and 6, both built during the French colonial era to connect the capital, Phnom Penh, with the Thai border.

Western Cambodia was the last holdout of the Khmer Rouge, the brutal regime toppled three decades ago. Rebel units held onto remote areas into the 1990s, skirmishing periodically with government forces and leaving the roads in total disrepair, a moonscape of potholes and mud that gave travelers sore backs and made for a crater-dodging, head-bumping ride.

Now enjoying the dividends of peace, Cambodia is halfway through a road-building spree with 10 projects totaling 1,173 kilometers, or 730 miles, of pavement still under way, said Prime Minister Hun Sen, who presided over the ceremony on Dec. 28. A further 11 major roads are under negotiation, he said.

The new roads make the storied temples of Angkor Wat a comfortable drive from the Thai border — and a short day’s drive from Bangkok. The roads also put more remote historic sites — in a country filled with them — within easy reach for tourists.

Roads are a big deal in Cambodia, and more than 5,000 villagers were summoned to attend the road’s official inauguration — farmers who arrived by bicycle, monks with freshly shaved heads, children in school uniforms. Organizers stenciled messages onto large banners strung across the canopy that gave shade from the searing sun: “Where there are bridges and roads there is hope.”

Cambodia’s road-building program is now taking “elephant steps, not mouse steps,” Mr. Hun Sen told the crowd.

Like the North-South Expressway in peninsular Malaysia, the American-built Friendship Road across Thailand’s northeast and the vast network of roads built by China over the past decade, roads are a key milestone of development in Asia.

For Cambodia, in particular, good roads help bring together a country fractured by civil war.

“This section was a very heavy battlefield,” said Pheng Sovicheano, the project manager of the road to the Thai border.

Mr. Pheng Sovicheano, who is also Cambodia’s deputy director general for public works, knows firsthand how bad the road was. During construction his driver drove into what looked like a large muddy pothole but turned out to be a small pond, flooding the car up to his chest.

Now, as a measure of Cambodia’s national reconciliation, some of the 360 workers Mr. Pheng Sovicheano hired to build the road were former Khmer Rouge soldiers.

Roads are expensive — $350,000 per kilometer for the road to the Thai border. But with many countries jockeying for influence in Cambodia the government appears to have no trouble finding financing. China is building a number of roads here, including one that passes through the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin.

Route 5 and Route 6 were financed with a low-interest, 32-year loan by the Asian Development Bank in Manila, an institution whose largest shareholders are Japan and the United States. South Korea is financing other road projects.

Mr. Hun Sen seems to enjoy playing these donors off each other. In his speech he chided the Asian Development Bank for its sluggish and bureaucratic two-year bidding process and praised the speed of Chinese projects.

“I compliment the way the Chinese companies work — very fast,” Mr. Hun Sen said, pointedly glancing over at the representative from the Asian Development Bank.

Political ties between Thailand and Cambodia have been strained by a territorial dispute near a 900-year-old mountaintop temple, Preah Vihear, but officials made no mention of the troubles.

Economic ties endure: By the end of this year western Cambodia will have three good roads leading to Thailand, connections that the government hopes will increase trade and investment. Western Cambodia gets most of its electricity from Thailand, and the company that built the road to the border, S.P.T. Civil Group, is based in Thailand. (The company has ties to Thaksin Shinawatra, the Thai prime minister deposed in the military coup of 2006 who last year was named Mr. Hun Sen’s economic adviser.)

The new roads will make it easier for Thai companies to sell more cement, instant noodles and other products across the border. For Japanese companies, the roads will link the supply chains of factories in Bangkok and in Ho Chi Minh City.

And for villagers in western Cambodia, it may help lift rock-bottom incomes.

Yong Da, a 39-year-old deliveryman in the town of Kralanh, has more than doubled his income because of the new road. “The road was bumpy, and I could not take much stuff on my motorcycle,” he said. He now makes $2.50 a day, up from a dollar a day.

The sheets of dust that enveloped the roadside are also gone, and villagers say their children no longer have trouble breathing.

Good roads and the end of the civil war have allowed villagers to take back the night. Travel after dark was discouraged two decades ago because of poor security and the perils of bad pavement.

But with modernity comes another type of danger. Mr. Pheng Sovicheano says he was driving to Phnom Penh one night recently when he came upon a road accident.

A young man had been killed on his motorcycle when he rammed into the back of a poorly lighted truck. The boy’s distraught mother blamed the good road, Mr. Pheng Sovicheano remembers.

“She said, ‘Before, when there were bad roads, he never drove this fast.”’

Japan to provide financial and technical assistance to develop logistics infrastructure in Cambodia

Japan to gain by helping region upgrade

25/12/2009
Nareerat Wiriyapong
Bangkok Post

Japan is offering Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations financial and technical assistance to develop logistics infrastructure, aiming to help Japanese companies operating in Asean to lower their logistics costs by half within five years.

The financial aid would be provided in terms of soft loans for Asean countries to build infrastructure such as roads, bridges and tunnels to develop intra-region links, said Techa Boonyachai, who chairs a capacity-building committee for drafting the national Logistics and Supply Chain Policy.

Most of funds would be located to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, while Thailand would receive a smaller portion of the supports he said.

The financial and technical offers are aimed in part at enhancing the speed of Japanese firms in completing business transactions. About 3,000 Japanese companies operating in Thailand would be the beneficiaries of this strategy, said Mr Techa, who is also vice-chairman of the Thai National Shippers Council (TNSC).

Under Japan's comprehensive logistics policy adopted by the cabinet in July 2009, the country has outlined measures to develop an efficient logistics system for the period of 2009 to 2013, in which green logistics is a core element.

The Yukio Hatoyama governments' pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25% in the next 10 years from 1990 levels is a very challenging target, Mr Techa said.

According to the Transport Ministry, exact amounts of financial aid have not yet been finalised. Details will be updated when Japanese and Thai transport officials meet again next year.

Mr Techa said the technical assistance from Japan to Thailand for green logistics would include eco-friendly driving, and models for inter-city and urban transport. Some developed countries, for example, have started using cleaner vehicles such as electric vans for short-distance transport in big cities to lower emissions.

$280 mln of Chinese debt for you, your children, the children of your children to pay back

China pledges aid to Cambodia

October 27, 2008
ABC Radio Australia

China has pledged 280 million US dollars in loans for infrastructure development in Cambodia.

Cambodia's Foreign Minister Hor Namhong says China's Premier Wen Jiabao made the pledge in talks with his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen on the sidelines of the just-ended Asia-Europe Summit in Beijing.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has now returned to Cambodia.

Cambodia needs over 2.5 bln USD for national road construction [-some of which will end up in the pockets of corrupt gov't officials]

PHNOM PENH, May 9, 2008 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia needs at least 2.5 billion U.S. dollars to implement the master plan of national road construction in 2006-2020, Minister of Public Works and Transportation Sun Chan Thol said on Friday.

The budget for national road construction will be increased if the oil price increases, Sun Chan Thol said.

"When we receive the benefit from oil and gas resources, the government will use the money to build national roads across the kingdom," he told Xinhua.

"We already have a master plan of national road construction across the country but we are waiting for the money," he said.

From 2003 to 2008, Cambodia has been building 1,700 km of national roads in all, with some road construction sites just opened and some under construction, he said.

The government is trying to link the national roads with those in neighboring countries, especially Great Mekong Subregion (GMS) countries, in order to improve the transpiration for economic development, he said.

India plans to invest in airport and cable car for Preah Vihear Temple [-An end to the dependence on Thailand's whims?]

Friday, May 9, 2008
The Mekong Times
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

Hang Sot, director of the Preah Vihear National Authority (PVNA), indicated on Thursday that an Indian company wants to invest in an airport and an electric cable car system in the Preah Vihear Temple region which is a major tourist zone in the north of the country, along the Thai border.

In an interview, Professor Hang Sot indicated that India’s Skill Company, which has previously successfully invested in cable car in Vietnam, and it has completed a project feasibility study to find the location for the construction last month. Hang Sot said that the company plans to build an airport on a 2-km-by-5-km field, located 32 km from the temple, the road system for the cable car will be 2,400-meter long, located near the ancient stair steps, and the road will be enlarged from 8 to 10-meter wide.

Hang Sot said: “We don’t know as yet when the project will start or how much it will cost, but we hope that it will see the daylight if the results from the discussion between the company representatives and vice-prime minister Sok An are positive.

According to an anonymous official close to this investment plan, the Skill Company plans to spend $600 million to develop the temple area. Regarding this investment, Ho Vandy, director of the Cambodia Association of Travel Agents, welcomed the project. “We support this development plan, but we must know how this development will affect our temple. We welcome it if this plan really exists,” Ho Vandy said.

Currently, there is no strong development to attract tourists to come and visit this temple located near the Thai border, due to a lack of proper infrastructure in this region. Regarding this latter issue, Hang Sot said: “Right now, we receive only 300 to 400 visitors per day who come to visit Preah Vihear Temple, and the majority of them come from Thailand. However, in the future, i.e. after the construction of the infrastructure, we hope that this region will attract a large number of tourists, and that the majority of them will come from inside Cambodia.”

Hang Sot added: “I trust that the number of tourists will increase by six folds in Preah Vihear, at the end of the development plan, in particular after the construction of road infrastructure.”