The National Assembly on Wednesday approved the government’s 2014 budget spending and the terms of Cambodia’s membership to the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
The National Assembly regularly debates and votes on budget implementation from previous years in an effort to establish formal consensus on the government’s expenditures and taxation.
In 2014, official government revenue was $3.7 billion, and total expenditures were $3.4 billion, leaving a surplus of around $300 million.
However, none of the lawmakers present from the opposition CNRP voted to approve the budget. CNRP lawmaker Son Chhay said this was because of inadequacies with both the government’s expenditures and its tax collection.
“Regarding the 2014 budget payment, we should have collected more revenues, and expenditures have been imprudent,” Mr. Chhay said. “So we cannot accept and support the law.”
Mr. Chhay added that tax processes were not entirely transparent and he suspected that there were still loopholes that meant insufficient funds were collected from the gaming, mining and tourist sectors.
Separately, lawmakers from both the CPP and CNRP approved Cambodia’s investment of $62.3 million in the AIIB, giving the country 0.06 percent of capital ownership in the $100 billion capitalized bank, with around 0.3 percent of its total voting power, said Vong Seyvisoth, secretary of state at the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
“This adopted law allows Cambodia to be qualified as a founding member of the bank,” said Mr. Seyvisoth. “The benefit is that we have greater voting power than we have in the Asian Development Bank and World Bank,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Tej Parikh)
