As teachers across Cambodia weigh whether to strike for higher wages today, donors say civil service reform is one of the areas where the government is moving too slowly.
Another is demobilization of the military, which “the international community had hoped would move faster,” Mario de Zamaroczy, resident representative of the International Monetary Fund, said Wednesday. De Zamaroczy joined Urooj Malik of the Asian Development Bank and Dominique McAdams of the UN Development Program to field questions about Monday’s meeting between donors and the government.
They offered some encouraging news, along with measured criticism. De Zamaroczy said Cambodia’s economy is expected to grow about 6 percent in 2001 and 2002, a marked improvement over 2000’s 4.5 percent.
And they issued a clear warning, not just to Cambodia, but to all developing countries: the pool of money donated by developed nations is shrinking, and poor countries will be competing with each other for a share of it.
Malik said donor nations and agencies are increasingly setting goals for recipient countries, and that recipients who most effectively reach those goals—such as civil service reform—can expect a bigger share of the money
As for Cambodia’s civil service reform, de Zamaroczy said the government has completed “several significant steps,” including a census of civil servants, setting up a fraud-resistant identification system based on fingerprints and a computerized payroll.
That all had to be done, he said, before planners could proceed with the reforms civil servants are waiting for, including a social security system and pay raises.
“You have to know how many workers you have,” de Zamaroczy said, before you can accurately project what their payroll or retirement costs will be. Those policies, he said, are expected to be drafted by March.
Demobilization has been slowed in part because promised funding of last year’s initial pilot program for 1,500 soldiers was delayed. But that money is in hand now, said de Zamaroczy, and an “assessment workshop” will be held in mid-February to rate the program’s effectiveness.
Nations willing to fund this year’s planned demobilization of 15,000 soldiers are waiting for that workshop’s assessment before sending the money for the next stage, he said.
Other areas of concern include the land reform and forestry laws which, like judicial reform, are making little visible progress, as well as recent reports of renewed illegal logging.
But donors commended the government for keeping inflation low, maintaining a stable exchange rate and showing a better than 4 percent growth in 2000 despite a worldwide increase in oil prices and the worst flooding in 40 years. They were also impressed with the financial sector reform, a drop in military spending and rise in social spending, and improved tax collections.
McAdams cautioned that reforms are moving slowly in part because Cambodia has traditionally been a top-down society, with a few high officials calling the shots.
She said the UN promotes “participatory” structures that involve citizens at all levels. “If you want to get anything done, it is important to get everybody on board,” or the reform structure will fall apart once the foreign agencies leave, she said.
