Prime Minister Hun Sen said Tuesday that foreign experts should not worry about Cambodia’s management of its potential oil wealth, which will be used for road and irrigation projects and to pay civil servant salaries.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony for over 2,000 students at Phnom Penh’s National Institute of Education, Hun Sen said oil and gas revenues would be put directly into the national budget, where, he said, “no one can take it.” “It is not necessary for our foreign friends to worry for us,” he added.
“If those friends had worried about us while Pol Pot, the war, and bombings were killing us, many of our people would not have been killed. But now that we have found oil, they are expressing their concerns.”
More often than not, windfall petroleum revenues send developing countries plummeting deeper into poverty, a paradox known as the “oil curse.” And ever since US oil giant Chevron struck oil off the coast of Cambodia in 2005, much ink has been spilled over the disaster that could befall Cambodia.
Hun Sen said charges that the government has been less than transparent about its oil reserves are unfounded. “Chevron hasn’t given data to the government,” he said.
Funcinpec parliamentarian Than Sina, who chairs the National Assembly’s commission on planning and investment, said a law on oil revenue management must be passed.
Than Sina said that the oil money should be used for microfinance projects, which would broadly help Cambodia’s predominately rural population. “Eighty percent of the population are farmers,” he said. “We need to restore their standard of living.”
SRP lawmaker Yim Sovann said he welcomed input from foreign experts on oil because the Cambodian government has failed to manage wisely the nation’s other natural resources.
He charged that gemstone and timber revenues have gone to corrupt officials, rather than benefiting the nation as a whole.
The absence of an anti-corruption law, a weak judiciary and limited access to information make it easier to mismanage government funds, he added.
Sok Hach, the director of the Economic Institute of Cambodia, an independent research group, said that even if the government does not want donor help, non-governmental groups could use it.
“If we don’t want to repeat the past experiences, such as for forestry, donors should provide substantial support to civil society to monitor the government actions,” he wrote in an e-mail.
