Under the Belt & Road Initiative, What Does Cambodia Get?

• 21 July 2022
• Local News
• 1674 Views

Cambodia and China have had a good relationship for a long time, and this relationship grew rapidly as the Belt and Road (BRI) project stepped in to develop infrastructure and start free trade relations between China and Cambodia.

At first was the development of casinos that grew like mushrooms, creating a huge influx of financial capital from mainland China to gamble money.

However, the Cambodian government has been able to manage the process well by carefully re-planning, pushing all those investments into agriculture, industry, retail, education, and especially infrastructure.

Everyone recognizes the amazing flow of finances in the last decade. Indeed, between 2012-2017, China invested more than US$15 billion, of which US$11 billion has been invested in Cambodia’s energy and infrastructure sectors, including roads, highways, ports, and airports, according to aseanbriefing.

Cambodia is also close to taking delivery of its first expressway project worth more than US$2 billion connecting Phnom Penh with Sihanoukville, which will be completed in September 2022.  (Read more)

By 2020, the project to build a large international airport worth about US$1.5 billion had also been launched in Kandal province, south of Phnom Penh. (Read more)

In the same year, the Siem Reap Angkor Thmey International Airport (AIAI) was announced worth about US$900 million, and it is being built on an area of ​​about 700 hectares, along with a special economic zone of 1,000 hectares.  (Read more)

Another brand-new airport project worth US$350 million has been built at Darasakor resort, in Koh Kong province (Read more)

In 2021, bilateral trade between Cambodia and China will reach an additional US$11.2 billion. As part of this trade, 170 enterprises in the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone have created nearly 30,000 jobs for local people.

In addition to the above projects, there are many other small, large, and medium-sized investments flowing in, such as Cellcard (Cambodia), Xiaomi, Alibaba, Tencent, Inbound FDI, etc.

Recently, HE Veng Sakhon, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Cambodia, also said that “belts and roads” have increased the capacity to produce and strengthen mutual cooperation, in particular for improving the agricultural sector, industry, and improving the living standards of the Cambodian people through joint development, utilizing development potential to the fullest extent and expanding the market for agricultural products to facilitate agribusiness, trade and economic development of the two countries.

In the three years and six months from 2019 to the first six months of 2022, agricultural product exports reached 2.4 million tons, including fresh bananas, rice, cassava slices, and cassava flour. “Mangoes, rubber, cassava waste, fresh mangoes, processed cashew nuts, cocoa powder and 24 other agricultural products worth US$1,942 million.”

• Analysis