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.

Cambodia Risks Losing Funding, Gains Against HIV: Doctors

HIV affected Cambodians sit outside their houses at Tuol Sambo village in Phnom Penh. (Photo: AP)

Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Wednesday, 22 December 2010

“The government of Cambodia and its development partners need to work together to carefully develop a financing plan..."

Cambodian and US health officials are asking the government to budget more money for HIV and AIDS, fearing that donor fatigue will erode gains the country has made in fighting the disease.

Cambodia currently spends around $50 million per year for its HIV and AIDS programs, with about 90 percent funded by donors.

However, donors tend to reduce spending on such programs over the long haul, and Cambodia needs to actually increase its spending, to about $68 million a year through 2031, to continue its progress against the disease.

Health officials said at the conference that donors tend to reduce assistance for HIV and AIDS programs over time. For example, the UK’s Agency for International Development will close its representative office in Cambodia in 2011 and stip funding health programs here in 2013.

Richard Snolnick, a doctor and professor at George Washington University, said the global economic crisis could also reduce funding for health programs. “The government of Cambodia and its development partners need to work together to carefully develop a financing plan, so that if the development partners begin to withdraw, the government can begin to substitute its own money.”

Cambodia has earned praise for the drop in its HIV and AIDS rates, but that could change if funding dries up, he said.

Cambodia has around 60,000 HIV and AIDS cases, representing a significant drop from the 1990s.

Long-term funding should now focus on intervention and prevention of target groups, “like young people, [men who have sex with men], drug users and migrants,” said Ho Naun, a member of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and head of a government health commission.

PM calls for transparent aid

Prime Minister Hun Sen addresses an audience of graduating students at the National Institute of Education on Wednesday. (Photo by: Uy Nousereimony)

Thursday, 10 June 2010
Cheang Sokha
The Phnom Penh Post

Hun Sen blasts claims that the government has misused money from donors

PRIME Minister Hun Sen has called on government officials to ensure that US$1.1 billion in development aid pledged by international donors at a conference last week is used properly.

During a graduation speech at the National Institute of Education on Wednesday, the prime minister also rebuffed critics who say the government has misused foreign development aid, charging that donors themselves are responsible for where and how the funds are spent.

He said opposition parliamentarians who have criticised the government following $1.1 billion in pledges should take their concerns directly to donors.

“I would like to stress that of the $1.1 billion, we know only the figure, so the others who criticise us, don’t ask the government – ask donors themselves, because they have embassies in Phnom Penh,” Hun Sen said.

“They did not give us the $1.1 billion to carry it for them. They have their own projects ... so don’t be so ignorant.”

He added that development projects are handled by donor countries, and that Cambodia only joins in the inauguration of projects after they are completed.

The comments came a week after the most recent Cambodia Development Cooperation Forum (CDCF), at which international donors pledged a total of $1.1 billion in development assistance for 2010, despite concerns about a lack of government transparency in the spending of aid money.

A briefing paper issued last week by 15 local NGOs lamented what it described as a decline in freedom of expression over the past year, and said donors could appear “complicit” if they did not pressure the government to rein in its legal offensives against outspoken critics.

Sam Rainsy Party spokesman Yim Sovann said Wednesday that many foreign-funded development projects have been the subject of scandals because of the corruption of government officials, and argued that the government has not been sufficiently transparent in applying the money.

“Some projects, which are run by the government institutions, the donor and development partners can’t control,” he said.

“Previous experience shows that the government has had problems with the World Bank and the World Food Programme – all these are linked with corruption.”

In his speech Wednesday, Hun Sen also addressed the series of warning shots that were exchanged by Cambodian and Thai troops stationed along the border near Oddar Meanchey province on Tuesday, describing it as a “small issue”.

“[Tuesday’s] clash did not expand the dispute along the border. I think this may have been caused by a misunderstanding. We do not want to have disputes. We want to shorten the disputes and expand the solutions,” the prime minister said.

Chhum Socheat, spokesman for the Ministry of Defence, said Tuesday that no injuries were reported when border troops from both sides fired warning shots in the air in Trapaing Prasat district at around 9:45am.

He said the six-minute exchange took place when a group of around 10 patrolling Cambodian soldiers met a group of Thai mixed forces, including forestry officers, police and Thai soldiers.

The incident followed an exchange of fire in Oddar Meanchey on April 19, when troops traded rifle shots and rockets in two incidents in Samrong district.

Don't lecture Dr. Hoon Xhen about transparency, he learnt everything from Pol Pot's and Uncle Ho's Universities already!

Cambodia tells donors to quit lecturing on fiscal transparency

May 26, 2010
DPA

'Global Witness is a group of thieves, they cooperate with foreign agencies' - Hun Xen, leader of Cambodia's family of the thieves of the nation

Phnom Penh - Prime Minister Hun Sen told a conference on good mining practices Wednesday that foreign organisations must stop giving advice on how to manage expected revenues.

'This is not the hour to talk about spending the money,' Hun Sen told several hundred business executives, diplomats and civil society members in a speech opening the two-day meeting.

'And don't talk too much looking on Cambodia as a child; the (government) is not a child,' he said. 'So do not advise too much.'

In recent years, foreign companies have signed dozens of exploration deals in industries from oil and gas to bauxite and gold.

Critics charge that the deals are opaque, with revenues failing to reach the national budget.

Hun Sen also lashed out at Britain-based Global Witness, which has published highly critical reports on the government's handling of state assets, including forestry and mining.

'Global Witness is a group of thieves, they cooperate with foreign agencies,' he charged. 'We have no money (from extractive industries) but they teach us about how to spend the money, and even blame us for stealing it.'

Global Witness spokesman George Boden last month urged donors to pressure Phnom Penh to account for millions of dollars in contract bonuses from French oil firm Total SA and Australian mining company BHP Billiton Ltd.

Boden said there was no sign that the bulk of the money had reached the budget.

'Donors must use the upcoming round of donor-government meetings to ask some tough questions and get some answers,' Boden said.

The government has said the money from Total and BHP Billiton went into a social fund, although details of that fund remain unclear.

BHP Billiton is currently under investigation by US and British regulatory authorities for possible violations of anti-graft legislation reportedly committed in Cambodia.

Hun Sen's speech came ahead of next week's donor conference at which pledges are made. In 2009, Cambodia received about 950 million dollars from foreign governments, roughly half its annual budget.

Cambodia is ranked as one of the world's most corrupt countries. It was listed last year in 158th place by graft watchdog Transparency International, with 1st place going to the least-corrupt country. Only 19 nations were ranked worse.

IPU’s mission to understand Cambodia’s parliament

02 March 2010
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

Four delegates of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) are currently visiting Cambodia to try to understand the role of the Cambodian parliament – which includes both the National Assembly and the Senate – in the oversight of foreign aid to Cambodia. The visit of the Geneva-based IPU will take place between 01 and 05 March 2010. The IPU delegates will meet with Cambodian senators and MPs from the CPP, the SRP, the HRP, and the royalist party (formerly known as the Norodom Ranariddh Party) on Monday 01 March at the National Assembly. A representative of the IPU delegates indicated that their mission to Cambodia is for understanding the role of the parliament in the oversight on the government, in particular in the use of development aid provided by the international community, and health-related aid.

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.”’

Lords of Poverty

First published in May/June 2008 in The Phnom Penh Post as part of the Voice of Justice columns. Of my travels and extensive living outside Cambodia, I have never witnessed elsewhere such the degree of upside-down modus operandi for daily functioning as I do here in Cambodia. Many times the people who are obstructionists and create obstacles are the people who should know better (both foreigners and Khmers), not the "ignorant" people of the villages I hear people blaming; they are people who lack generosity of spirit or they have enough information, even intelligence, but lacking wisdom. Currently, the Lords of Poverty roam and strut among us here in Cambodia armed with great resources to do damage, and in the process taint the image of those who actually are doing commendable work. Through personal experience, I am against private company acting as the clearinghouse of millions of aid dollars for local NGOs. These clearinghouses have no incentive to do humanitarian work. On the contrary, they do everything to make themselves indispensable; that is to say, they use their position to acquire knowledge of local NGOs and in turn, use that knowledge to divide the NGOs to further justify their existence; these private companies have the greater incentive to give the grants to mediocre NGOs and disparage the successful ones, again to make their existence necessary: "See, how divisive and incompetent these NGOs are and how we necessary." Also, I want to emphasize that the percentage of foreign consultants should be reduced in favor of local hires... With a little bit of patience and wisdom, a local consultant can be had for a fraction of the salary of the foreign consultant. More than that, it works against the mentality of genuine capacity-building. People who are of integrity and genuine in their observations would readily agree with me that current foreign assistance and practice of hiring are inadvertently embedding the culture of dependency and the Lords of Poverty.

LORDS OF POVERTY
Enablers of Hypocrisy and Mismanagement

Let's keep that pointing finger at the government accountable; however, let's also focus on the three other fingers pointing back at us. Let's focus on the hypocrisy and outrageousness of the do-gooders – donors and civil society – in light of other dark, societal norms.

Societal norms
What arc some societal norms darkening current Cambodia? And who are the enablers of these darkening norms?

Outrageous behavior
We live in a society where outrageous behavior – by us Khmer and foreigners alike – is the norm. As donors, civil society and other "do-gooders", we enable this outrageousness, and sometimes engage in it with full confidence that we can get away with it. Take for example the event of this past Thursday at CSD where "good people" hired armed Ministry of Interior police to exact emotional violence (that easily could have turned into physical violence) on staff and others. Where do we even begin in pointing out the countless, irregular, illegal, "undue process" and outrageousness of this act?

The more outrageous acts are the norm, the more dense and obtuse we become; the less we are able to hear and understand, the more outrageous we become. It's an upward, vicious, spiraling cycle of raising the volume. "We" in this regard includes both us Khmer and foreigners.

Disproportionate reaction
Disproportionate reaction is the norm. Instead of reacting to these outrageous acts with outrage, we stay mute; we claim neutrality; or, we smile and laugh and shake our heads at the Cambodians or the crazy foreigners hiding in Cambodian society. We are so used to the outrageous (which is beyond our scope to exact control) that in order to still feel we do have sensibility, we over-react to the minutiae where in light of the totality of circumstances, it has no significance. This is why killers of millions are permitted to get away with murder and are still held in awe.

(As an aside, I'd like to make a distinction between fairness and neutrality, as they are often used interchangeably. If one is a stakeholder and has adequate information, one can no longer claim inaction as neutrality and not enable the other side. Neutrality is reserved for 3rd parties who are not in the know, nor should have interests in knowing. But to be inactive or not take a stance as a stakeholder with sufficient information is to not neutral but to inadvertently and foolishly be enabling. As I often tell my staff: As your boss. I want to be and will be fair; I do not want and will not be neutral. If one staff brings to me shoddy work, and another excellent work, do not think I will remain neutral and not make a distinction. To the contrary, if I do not praise excellence and be indifferent or dismissive of mediocrity, I am being unfair to the one who worked hard and produced excellence, and stripped all incentives for future excellence. Fairness relates to using the same measuring stick; neutrality relates to information and how far or close we are to a situation.)

Another aspect of disproportionate reaction that is a societal norm relates to the interaction between a Cambodian and a Westerner. Generally speaking, a Cambodian is passive and deferential; the Westerner assertive/aggressive and overbearing. This unbalanced equation creates a norm whereby a Cambodian will always be at a disadvantage in relation to her foreign counterpart - in a discussion, in a negotiation, in a relationship.

Empty verbiage
We Khmers are still lacking in sophistication as our verbiage too often arc viscerally empty and crude; they are understood as such and accepted as norms. We function at this level of the reality of unreality.

Foreigners are more sophisticated in masking their empty verbiage. But sophistication is only a higher art-form of facade, superficiality. One example of how foreigners have normalized the empty rhetoric is in the area of "capacity-building" or "local ownership". Foreign donors "train" and train and train and train on ownership, on building local capacity because it sounds good and right; just don't "do" ownership, as that competes into their terrain; competes into their survival; they need to justify their existence through the "incompetence", the "divisiveness" of the local NGOs, the local Cambodians. The growing pool of highly capable Cambodians is swept away by these generalizations to their detriment.

Envy
We are so envious of excellence and success and do nothing to strive toward them but rather expend our energy in being in a state of envy. If only envy could stay within the self and not spill into destructive, obstructive behavior of gossip and tearing down.

Mistrust, distrust
Mistrust arises from misrepresentation, from a disregard for the sentiments of the affected individuals or groups. It also arises from political spin. We Khmer must be more careful of this in light our culture of fear, secrecy and the paranoid produced by the Khmer Rouge years and other regimes since.

Dependency, perpetuate "Lords of Poverty" mentality
Perpetuating the status quo is perpetuating poor governance, perpetuating mismanagement, perpetuating a "lords of poverty" mentality.

In 1993, yes 99% of foreign consultants were justified; now, 5% are justifiable. The others are embedding and enabling the mentality of dependency.

Ownership – how many local NGOs are truly "owned" by that director or senior staff? Many are run (behind the scenes) by consultants and sometimes ambitious/over exuberance 2nd year law students who have the legal expertise but cannot "feel" the situation nor understand the larger vision of what is Cambodia and "Cambodian".

Disincentives of reform
The societal norms mentioned above are disincentives of genuine reform and change.

The way we at CSD try to fight against these darkening societal norms is by encouraging a little bit of attitude among the staff. Strike that. We encourage a lot of attitude. With a lot of heart. It is the necessary first step toward ownership and social development.

Theary C. SENG, former director of Center for Social Development (March 2006—July 2009), founded the Center for Justice & Reconciliation (www.cjr-cambodia.org) and is currently writing her second book, under a grant, amidst her speaking engagements.

The end of an NGO era in Cambodia

Nov 14, 2008
By Craig Guthrie
Asia Times Online (Hong Kong)

PHNOM PENH - With an overwhelming electoral mandate, robust economy and a potential bounty of oil and gas revenues, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen feels in a strong enough position to move against the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which have been a perennial thorn in the strongman's side since he took power more than two decades ago.

In late September he called for the revival of a controversial law which would require the country's more than 2,000 associations and NGOs to complete a complex registration process and submit to stringent financial reporting requirements. The draft law is expected to be passed by Hun Sen’s Cambodia People's Party (CPP)-dominated National Assembly in the coming months.

"Cambodia has been heaven for NGOs for too long," he said in a speech broadcast on national radio on September 26, adding that he had given up hope of reading any positive reports written by international or local NGOs. "The NGOs are out of control ... they insult the government just to ensure their financial survival."

By enacting the law, Hun Sen could recalibrate the government's terms of engagement with the Western-led aid community, on which his government has heavily relied for decades to finance its budget. The move comes as private-led foreign investment has fueled the country's economic rise, led in the main by China and South Korea.

"Many of the services provided by NGOs today will one day either be privatized or the revenues of the government will grow to such an extent that the functions currently being done by NGOs will be taken over by the government," said Brett Sciaroni, chairman of Cambodia's International Business Association.

The NGO law's enactment would be a symbolic power shift between Hun Sen's CPP-led government, further emboldened by its landslide victory in this year's general election, and the Western-backed NGOs which have long chastised it over human-rights abuses and corruption allegations.

International aid agencies have for decades held the purse strings on the aid which has sustained the national economy since it emerged from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, the ultra-Maoist regime which systematically attempted to transform Cambodia into an agricultural utopia between 1975 and 1979, and a subsequent decade-plus of civil war.

Some contend it was the Khmer Rouge's economic failures, including a devastating countrywide famine that killed many and stalked the regime's traumatized survivors, which set the stage for Cambodia's now decades-long dependence on foreign aid.

The British aid agency Oxfam began programs soon after the Khmer Rouge's 1979 ouster, despite incurring the wrath of the United States and the United Kingdom governments for helping the Hanoi-sponsored regime put in place by the invading Vietnamese.

Jacques Beaumont from the United Nations Children's Fund, and Francois Bugnion from the International Red Cross (IRC), who both arrived in Phnom Penh in 1979, were pivotal players in that humanitarian effort. They finally persuaded the IRC, which was fearful of being seen as compromising its political neutrality, into launching what turned into its most significant relief operation since World War II.

But the comprehensive aid experiment did not begin in earnest until after the signing of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, which by and large ended the country's debilitating civil war. Since then myriad NGOs have come to Cambodia to work on everything from demining to microfinance, orphanages to agri-business, public health issues to snaring globe-trotting pedophiles.

The demining NGOs in particular made great progress, clearing an estimated 25,000 hectares of mined territory between 1992-2003. Cambodia has also been hailed as a global success story in fighting HIV/AIDs transmission, led by NGO-organized education programs and health aid. Prevalence rates have fallen by nearly half, from 3% in 1997 to 1.6% in 2006.

Fractious relations

But Hun Sen's government's relationship with NGOs and international aid agencies has often been fractious, epitomized by its tumultuous interactions with the environmental watchdog Global Witness over its consistent accusations of high-level government links to illegal logging, and with the UK-based rights lobby Amnesty International for its criticism of state-sponsored forced evictions across the country.

The World Bank also suspended US$11.9 million in funds in 2006 for seven sanitation projects when it found evidence of rampant extortion, bribe-taking, bid-rigging and procurement manipulation, leading Hun Sen to claim the multilateral lender was trying to tarnish his government's credibility. The bank only agreed to unfreeze the projects' funding in 2007 after the government promised to strengthen anti-corruption measures.

Despite Cambodia's recent economic boom, including a skyrocketing average 11% gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the past three years, a sizable portion of the nation's real income still derives directly from donor nations in amounts wrangled out each year at annual Consultative Group meetings.

The meetings were for years characterized by vague promises from the Cambodian government in response to weak demands by donors for reform, including the long-delayed adoption of an anti-corruption law. But in the past two years these demands have become less relevant with the surge in aid from China, which typically has less good governance or transparency conditions attached.

While Chinese aid is generally funneled through vast infrastructure projects - including hydropower and road projects - usually contracted to Chinese companies, Western nations' share of the average US$600 million in annual aid arrives through international aid agencies and NGOs. The process has been widely cast as a corrupt, inefficient gravy train, giving some traction to Hun Sen's complaints.

"In the 1980s, there was a popular T-shirt satirizing US Army recruitment commercials with the slogan, 'Join the army. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And kill them'," Brad Adams, executive director for Human Rights Watch's Asia Program, was quoted saying to Action Aid in 2005. "In the new millennium, it could be rephrased, 'Join the aid community. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And make a killing'."

This is still the case in Cambodia, Adams told Asia Times Online. "You can start with all the foreign consultants making more than $10,000 per month, almost always tax free. This is a huge drain on the aid budget for Cambodia and in many cases the consultants produce nothing of value for the country."

Many analysts and expatriates agree that NGOs and their workers suffer from an image crisis among the Cambodian public, partly due to their comparatively high salaries and lifestyles, which are far adrift from the 35% of the population which lives on less than $0.50 a day.

Country directors for prominent international aid agencies typically receive a $250,000 annual package, which includes a spacious villa in the capital's upmarket "NGO-ville" area, a four-wheel-drive vehicle - usually emblazoned with the logo of their donor agency or charity - and fees paid for the capital's better international schools.

The aid watchdog Action Aid estimated in 2005 that the 700 or so international consultants working for NGOs in the country earned more than Cambodia's 160,000 civil servants put together. "In 1993, yes, 99% of foreign consultants were justified; now, 5% are justifiable. The others are embedding and enabling the mentality of dependency," Center of Social Development director Theary Seng said in June.

Arne Sahlen, a founding member of the Cambodia Support Group, a 25-year-old volunteer organization, echoes Hun Sen's comments that fundraising has overtaken the focus on the actual progress of several NGO projects. According to Sahlen, "vast" resources are being swallowed up on pursuing donors that could be invested on direct project needs. "The need to please donors has warped the focus to not necessarily what is best for the project but what may look best on an application," said Sahlen.

Others contend that several NGOs are actually impeding the development of a self-sustaining private sector, mainly through the alleged abuse of their not-for-profit status to pursue business opportunities. That status helps them avoid taxes and other unofficial costs that private businesses pay, giving non-profit an unfair competitive advantage in the market, they say.

Cambodians now understand the word NGO, especially in the local context, to be a for-profit enterprise, said Sophal Ear, the author of The Political Economy of Cambodia, Aid and Governance. "It's all a business and this is just another way to avoid taxes," he said. "When not covered by donors, capital costs for NGOs have largely been privatized, through an extensive network of 'donations' to the ruling party by Oknhas [politically connected tycoons] politicians, and civil servants."

Discretionary powers

The NGO law, known formally as the Law on Organizations, was first written over a decade ago and aims to address such complaints. It would require NGOs to submit for government approval documents detailing their structure, goals, funding resources, properties and even logos. It also entails fines and imprisonment for any NGO which fails to submit annual reports to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Many fear the discretionary powers the law will give the government in monitoring and sanctioning NGOs - rather than vice versa. Hun Sen no doubt had his one good eye on the anticipated bounty of future oil and gas revenues when calling for the controversial law's revival. Chevron, the US energy giant, discovered oil off Cambodia southwestern coast in 2005 and analysts have predicted the find could generate anywhere between $200 million and $2 billion in annual revenues for the government when full-scale production begins in 2010.

The government is still awaiting a key assessment from Chevron of the supposed find, and both sides have more recently played down expectations. Nonetheless, NGOS are already warning of a possible "resource curse" similar to places like Nigeria, where corrupt governments pilfered and wasted earnings derived from energy exports.

"NGOs are trying to tell us how to use the oil money, but this is of no interest to us. What is important is how to make our resources profitable," Hun Sen said in a recent radio broadcast speech.

Despite his criticisms, there are reasons for concern. A new NGO coalition has begun work to oversee the transparency of the management of future oil funds. Led by the NGO Forum, it has given little information on its structure, but has said it plans to ensure the potential financial benefits from the windfall are managed in a socially responsible manner, and that benefits filter down to the impoverished grassroots.

The World Bank, which also aims to monitor the government's oil revenue management, noted in May that international aid is often poorly managed in key sectors, with the problem of "fragmented" assistance especially acute in health and education.

In the health sector, 22 donors are currently working with over 100 NGOs to deliver $110 million in Official Development Assistance (ODA) per year through 109 projects - yet use of the national system remains at just between 13% to 18%, said the bank. The vast majority of rural Cambodians are forced to use an expensive yet rudimentary private healthcare system which is more reminiscent of poorer African than neighboring Asian nations.

The education system is also beset by severe underfunding, with thousands of graduates churned out from poorly regulated "international" universities with degrees that often leave them ill-prepared to enter the job market. Until now, the only paying option for many graduates was to work in donor agencies and international NGOs. But if Chinese and South Korean private investment flows hold up and the country's hoped-for energy bonanza is realized, that may all soon change if Hun Sen has his NGO-curbing way.

Craig Guthrie is a former reporter for the Mekong Times newspaper in Phnom Penh. He has covered Cambodian affairs since 2004.

Al Jazeera's 101 East - Foreign Aid In Cambodia

101 East asks if international aid is harming Cambodia more than it is helping.


Part 1


Part 2

Cambodia turns Killing Fields into agricultural success [... even though farmers are losing their lands due to land-grabbing?]

Jul 15, 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - Images of a country desolated by the Khmer Rouge, an entire population put to work in the rice fields and yet dying by the hundreds of thousands of starvation, still haunts Cambodia.

But since the ultra-Maoist's disastrous drive from 1975 to 1979 to turn the country into an agrarian utopia bereft of markets, money and technology, Cambodia has quietly picked itself up and is poised to become one of the major rice exporters in the region, experts said.

From the dismal postwar years, Cambodia has steadily rebuilt its irrigation systems, developed its technology and slowly but surely reclaimed thousands of hectares of rice fields from land mines.

'Cambodia will become a major rice exporter,' Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun said. 'We achieved food security in 1995, and last year, as well as self-sufficiency, we had 2 million tons left over for exports.

'We currently have 2.5 million hectares under rice cultivation, but we expect to increase that to 3 million.

Cambodia's rice producers and millers are optimistic about their future, and this year, Cambodia even sold subsidized rice to African countries, including Guinea, as a humanitarian gesture.

So confident is Cambodia of being able to hold its own with the big regional rice players in the future that Prime Minister Hun Sen has been a key proponent of a proposed regional rice cartel similar to that of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Thailand's brainchild, the proposed Organization of Rice Exporting Countries, was aimed at protecting the region's major rice producers but has deeply concerned major importers, such as the Philippines, which said it would only benefit major producers.

Phou Puy, president of the Cambodian National Rice Millers Association, said new growing techniques, rice strains and irrigation projects could potentially double the country's rice crop by 2015.

'With these changes, Cambodia's traditional one-time-per-year harvest can increase to two, even three times a year,' Phou Puy said. 'By 2015, that could provide exports of 10 million tons.

'Currently, we stand at between 2 [million] to 5 million tons, depending on weather conditions,' he said.

The 2015 projection would have Cambodia matching neighbouring Thailand's export predictions for 2008. Thailand is currently the world's largest rice exporter.

Cambodia is increasingly also becoming a player in biofuel production, but Phou Puy denied that that development would put to use land that could be planted for rice.

Vast industrial farms have sprung up on the north-western border with Thailand, producing corn and soybeans, and jatropha, which is endemic to Cambodia and a prime source of biodiesel, now takes up hundreds of hectares.

'But these crops grow where rice doesn't, so they do not impact on our rice yield,' Phou Puy said. 'I have no doubt Cambodia has the potential to match or surpass our rice-producing neighbours.

Such a development would be a major achievement not only for the country but also for donors who have poured billions of dollars into Cambodia's agricultural sector.

While China has been a key donor for irrigation development, alongside others including the Asian Development Bank, Australia has led the way in Cambodia's technological and scientific advances, funding research and development projects.

The Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute has benefited from millions of dollars in Australian aid and in return has been integral in developing new strains of rice, more resistant to the whims of climate change and the ravages of insects.

The institute's mission is to educate individual growers in a country where the bulk of people involved in agriculture work on mostly small family plots.

These sorts of measures have been so successful that Chan Sarun envisages a second lucrative niche market in organic rice, which demands a higher price but costs farmers less to produce because they don't use expensive fertilizers and pesticides.

'Organic rice is very popular,' the minister said. 'We aim to reduce chemical fertilizer use step by step. The world prefers natural food, so we are moving in that direction.

Mechanization will not come overnight, and experts agreed the days of Cambodia's rice farmers plodding patiently behind a plough pulled by cows or buffalo were not numbered.

But they said simple techniques with the right cropping, strains and a guaranteed water supply might one day take Cambodia to the top of the region in producing one of the world's most precious staples.

Begging festival celebration in preparation: CPP hopes that aid will still pour in

Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

Even though it is facing with a barrage of criticisms from NGOs and Global Witness just before the Consultative Group (CG) meeting next week, high-ranking CPP officials expressed their belief that these criticisms will not lead to aid cut for Cambodia. Nguon Nhel, CPP first Vice-president of the National Assembly, said on Monday that he is confident that donor countries will continue to provide aid to Cambodia, because they know that the (Cambodian) government is doing a good job, and it deserves the aid. Nguon Nhel told The Cambodia Daily that donor countries would not provide sacks and sacks of dollars in aid to a corrupt government. He added: “I think that the donor countries and international institutions won’t believe the NGO’s report.” CPP MP Cheam Yiep said that he believed the donor countries will listen to the comments made by Samdach Hun Sen and Mr. Keat Chhon, the minister of economy and finance.