Cambodia's Development Dynamics: Past Performance and Emerging Priorities

ABSTRACTED FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This Report analyses Cambodia’s development dynamism over the last two decades and identifies emerging development priorities for the next two. It examines Cambodia’s past performance, emerging priorities and future challenges in economic, social, environmental and political spheres. One of the distinguishing features of this Report is that it examines Cambodia’s past performance and emerging development priorities within a multi-country comparative perspective. The guiding principle was to select a few small to medium-size Asian economies that had broadly similar income levels to Cambodia during the five consecutive decades from the 1950s through to the 1990s. Six such “comparator” countries were selected – Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar from Southeast Asia, and Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan from South Asia. Unlike the comparator countries, Indonesia and Thailand share few commonalities with Cambodia, especially in terms of income levels. From a futuristic perspective, however, Cambodia has the potential to achieve an income level closer to that enjoyed by these countries today, say, in two decades time. Indonesia and Thailand, then, serve as “benchmark” countries in identifying the emerging priorities and a development vision for Cambodia over the coming years.

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