Cambodia can regain sustained economic growth by increasing productivity among firms and workers, diversifying exports, and taking steps to boost domestic investment, the World Bank said in its Cambodia Economic Memorandum. Cambodia’s growth rate plunged an estimated 10.1 percentage points to contract by 3.1 per cent in 2020 before resuming modest growth of 2.2 per cent in the year just ended.
The dramatic slowdown in output can be attributed in large part to the pandemic, but Cambodia’s dependence on a narrow range of products, markets, and financing sources left it poorly positioned to absorb the shocks, according to the report, Resilient Development, a Strategy to Diversify Cambodia’s Growth Model.
Five products – garments, footwear, rice, cassava, and tourism – have accounted for 80 per cent of Cambodia’s total exports in recent years, while just two markets – the European Union and the United States — take 69 per cent of merchandise exports. Labour productivity is low due to low levels of skills and training and low ‘total factor productivity’, a measure of how efficiently a country uses labour and capital in aggregate. In addition, the country’s low savings rate and low domestic investment have led to a heavy reliance on external financing sources.
