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Khmer

De-Dollarising Cambodia: 10 Years On, 2008, Issue 01 (For full details please download - pdf 162KB)

Jayant Manon

Introduction

Ten years ago I wrote an article for the Cambodia Development Review (Menon 1998) on the pros and cons of dollarisation in Cambodia, and policy options on the way forward. A lot has happened since then. GDP growth has averaged close to 10 percent over the past decade, resulting in an almost doubling of income per capita (Table). Poverty incidence is estimated to have fallen by about 1 percent per annum (from 47 to 35 percent, for the decade up to 2004), even though inequality has worsened (World Bank 2007). Consumer price inflation has fallen sharply, from an average of 56 percent over 1990–98 to an average 3.5 percent over 1998–2007. Inflation has started rising again recently, with the spike in food and energy prices, but this is happening almost everywhere. Government revenue collections have recently consistently exceeded expectations, and the budget deficit has fallen to manageable levels. The recent discovery of oil and gas could be a significant boon for the country, and should provide the resources necessary to address a range of socio-economic issues, provided of course that the resources are not mismanaged. In short, the economic and social achievements over the past decade have been the most spectacular in Cambodia’s history.

It is against this backdrop that we find that Cambodia today is ..........