Joylani saw the title of this post and asked, “What do you know about Cambodian development?” I told her the few things I am going to write about and she replied that its all anecdotal. That is true, the information is all anecdotal. It’s based on the observations and conjectures of myself and the Khmer I’ve spoken with. Like the other country-specific development posts I’ve written, I’m not planning on submitting this article to the WSJ or FT. I haven’t researched Cambodian economic data or even fact-checked what people have told me, so read accordingly.
Like most places we’ve visited, Cambodia is a poor country relative to the West. I’ve been told average salaries range from 70 to 80 USD per month, with teachers earning a measly 30-40 USD/month. I recently read that inflation has just surpassed 15 percent. Unemployment is high as well, although I cannot believe it is 60 percent as one person told me. Well, it might be true, based purely on the number of moto drivers that offer us rides. We’ve been to quite a few places with persistant rickshaw and tuk-tuk drivers, but Cambodian moto drivers take the cake. First of all, they’re everywhere. Two, its cheap. And three, they’ll always offer to wait around and take you back with almost no charge for waiting. They are an indicator of just how scarce work is. I mean, look at our driver in Siem Reap who drove us around all day for 10 USD! Granted, most of the time he waited for us, but keep in mind, he also incurred the cost of renting the vehicle and paying for gas. Regardless, the low incomes explain why corruption is such a large problem. I already detailed how the police extort money, but corruption even touches public primary schools. In Phnom Penh, public school teachers charge students 500 riel (.12 USD) per hour, although this amount is less in the provinces. It doesn’t seem like a huge sum, but when you consider that the average household only earns 20 USD per week and one week of school for one child costs about 4 USD, you can see it is quite expensive. And that’s for government-run public schools. Consequently, NGOs are everywhere in Cambodia. Like Lao, we’ve seen plenty of fancy World Vision and UNICEF SUVs driving around. USAID logos are on a lot of things too. At least their logo communicates who’s paying for it: “A gift from the American people.” At least my tax-contribution is recognized. I’d like to see the World Vision SUV’s have decals saying, “A gift from (list of people who think their money is going to sponsor a Cambodian child).”
Counterbalancing the foreign aid, is the massive amounts of corruption. Corruption actually inflates the prices of everything, from school to transportation. Additionally, corruption is responsible for other social ills such as curbs on political freedom and the continual negligence of certain areas. However, despite the barriers that corruption creates, Cambodia is developing. Many new roads have been paved in the past several years and Phnom Penh is full off new scooters and motorcycles. Yet, the rural areas are a different story. We’ve driven on plenty of dirt roads throughout Cambodia and most areas we have seen do not have power lines, but must rely of generators instead. The rural areas are more developed than Lao though, as agriculture is done on a much larger scale. Rather than the little few meter by few meter vegetable plots of Lao, Cambodia has multi-acre fields. This is in addition to the miles and mile or rubber plantations we’ve seen. In some ways, the agricultural development is too fast though. We’ve seen large swaths of smoldering forest, where planters and farmers are clearing land. Numerous billboards denounce slash-and-burn and state its illegality, but the problem is apparent. The monetary temptation is too much and a little forest seems like a small sacrifice for aspiring farmers. I have heard that all the new plantations and factories being built are for the Vietnamese market- everyone in Cambodia wants to make a buck exporting to Vietnam. Development is happening, but its inefficient and it has a high cost.
I’m not sure if I’ve written about my observation that developing countries are the ugliest. Undeveloped countries don’t have industrial waste and have relatively little waste from consumer products. Developed countries have huge amounts of industrial and consumer waste, but they’ve figured out how to deal with it. But developing countries have the industry and technology without the laws of a developed nation. Like many developing countries, Cambodia has the following problems: it has a growing economy, but no limits on building or destroying nature; it has a growing number of autos, but no emissions regulations; Cambodians have consumer goods, but the population has no education on how to dispose waste (plastics and paper litter, etc); it has industry, but no effective way of disposing or recycling the by-products. At some point, Cambodia (and India, and Nepal, and a bunch of other places we haven’t yet visited) will address these problems and reach the level of development as modern-day first-world nations, but its an ugly stage. Britain went through it at the outset of the industrial revolution, followed by the rest of Europe and America in the late-19th century. Japan went through it in the 50s and 60s too. Sorry to go off a tangent, but Cambodia is definitely changing rapidly and I foresee it getting uglier before it gets prettier.
So what have I learned: Cambodia is poor, it relies heavily on foreign aid, corruption is rampant, development is happening but haphazardly, and everyone would rather have dollars than riel. It will be interesting to see how Cambodia’s attempt at development will turn out: will the Cambodian people benefit (like Estonia, Turkey, or Thailand to give some examples from this trip), will the politicians benefit (like Russia), or will China and Vietnam benefit the most?
“Before the fall of Sihanouk, Cambodia was the last paradise, the last paradise.”
-helicopter pilot, Victory in Vietnam