| |
Opening Address at the Opening of the
2009 Cambodia’s Outlook Conference on “Cambodia and the Global Economic Crisis:
Impact, Policy Responses and Action”
Phnom Penh Hotel, 12th March 2009
Excellencies, Ladies
and Gentlemen!
It is my great pleasure this morning to deliver the keynote
opening address of the 2009 Cambodia’s Outlook Conference on “Cambodia and
the Global Economic Crisis: Impact, Policy Responses and Action”. I
would like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome CDRI and ANZ Royal Bank’s initiative and partnership in hosting this very
valuable annual Outlook Conference. This is the third occasion on which I have
had the pleasure of delivering the opening address. I see the Outlook Conference
as a unique event in Cambodia as each year it brings together leaders bring together personally invited leaders from government, the private sector,
research institutes, and civil society, and the international development
community to consider Cambodia's achievements and its future. This year’s Outlook Conference, its timing and theme, are of
particular significance as we all come to terms with the impact of the global
and regional financial and economic crisis, and how we must respond with
efficiency and effectiveness.
This global and regional crisis is not a crisis of Cambodia’s
making. It has been caused by external factors beyond Cambodia’s control, and it
is a crisis that will have serious impacts on us all. As I have emphasised in
other recent forums, we must now work together to manage our way through it, to
ensure that the remarkable development and poverty reduction achievements of
Cambodia over the past two decades are not lost, and to further strengthen
Cambodia’s key sectors for future growth and development so that we can emerge
from the crisis with a stronger, more sustainable economy, stronger
institutions, and a stable, peaceful and resilient society in Cambodia.
We are fortunate that we face these challenges while our economy
is still in good shape by having achieved a decade of sustainable strong
economic growth and sound macro-economic management. A recent World Bank’s study
has placed Cambodia in the top ten developing countries with the highest
economic growth rate from 1998-2007, with our average growth over the past
decade reaching double digits, but slowing in 2008 to around 7%, which is still
relatively high by the international standards. At the same time, we have made
an impressive record in poverty reduction, from 45% in 1994 to around 30% in
2008. We have been able to achieve this impressive record through responsible
macro-economic management and a steady programme of reforms by government, along
with the dynamism of our private sector, and the productivity and effort of the
Cambodian people. We have made great progress in the provision of better
infrastructure, roads, bridges, irrigation, transport and telecommunications,
and the promotion of international labour standards in our garment industry, the
promotion of tourism, and the promotion of a positive enabling environment for
trade and investment sectors development.
It is also important to stress that, although Cambodia’s banking sector is
small, it is dynamic and growing, with limited exposure to the global financial
turmoil. This sector has been placed under strict supervision of the National
Bank of Cambodia, and has received the credibility from the government, the
private sector and the Cambodian people. We must not lose sight of our other
strengths, many of which were discussed during last year’s Outlook Conference.
Indeed, Cambodia is rich in natural resources – forests, water, fisheries and
other minerals. With all these merits, the Royal Government remains committed to
the responsible management and exploitation of these natural resources that can
bring maximum benefits for economic and social development, wealth creation and
poverty reduction, and to address the challenges regarding governance and
administration, transparency, conflict resolution, corporate responsibility, and
environmental management. Moreover, this is particularly important and
challenging in relation to land policy and management, and ensuring a balanced
approach that promotes the productive use of land, to increase income and
improve people’s living standard, and also to ensures that rural land is being
put to best use for agricultural and rural development and for poverty
reduction, which are our common goals.
The
Royal Government continues to demonstrate its responsiveness to the needs of the
private sector which plays key role in prioritized development areas such as
economic diversification, infrastructure, energy, telecommunications and
financial services, and through initiatives such as the government private
sector forum and the open sky investment policy, to support and promote the
capacity of the private sector to grow and compete on the regional and global
stage. The government also supports the urgent priorities as identified during
last year’s Outlook Conference, and key issues which are being put up for
further discussion in today’s conference. Those issues include coordinated and
well resourced action of the Royal Government and development partners, and the
private sector, to work together to significantly improve the quality and
content of tertiary education, and particularly vocational education and
training, so Cambodia’s human resource development and the skills of its young
people can better meet the needs of a booming private sector and a more complex
and competitive labour market. This is now more urgent than ever if we are to
carefully manage our way through the crisis and emerge stronger in the future.
Due to the unfavorable
climate resulting from the financial crisis and global economic downturn, the
economic growth in Cambodia in 2008 is estimated to reach around 7 percent
compared to 10 percent annually in the last four years. The growth in 2009 is
predicted to slow down even further. In the difficult situation, the Royal
Government has taken systematic and well-sequenced measures in order to ensure
macro-economic stability and strong financial sector as well as to stimulate
growth through fiscal measures, trade facilitation and investment. The Royal
Government has also focused on further strengthening the social safety net for
the people.
Although the Royal Government have taken various measures to
tackle the crisis, it is still progressing and become more severe for some
countries and its relief is unpredictable. This crisis will impact some key
economic sectors and bring down the growth of major sectors such as garment,
tourism, and construction by about 15-20% which will have negative impacts on
our economy and people. This means that we must work even harder on some of the
key sectoral challenges which are the agenda of today’s discussion as follow:
- To diversify the markets for our garments and other manufactured goods market to
East Asia, the Middle East and Africa etc;
- To further improve tourism infrastructure and the development of
more tourism destinations and attractive tour packages;
- To prioritize the use of resources and expertise of the
government, and donors to broaden and diversity our agricultural sector, in
order to attract more quality investments in agri-business and improve
agricultural trade linkages, land reform, agricultural diversification and
agro-processing;
- To further invest in infrastructure development, particularly
energy generation to reduce energy costs to the private sector and to the
community; and
- Continue to aggressively promote and support wealth creation and
improving the people’s livelihood according to the correct principles and
procedures as stipulated in the Cambodia’s Constitution.
In general, I am particularly concerned that together we
develop effective responses to the crisis to help protect and support the poor
and vulnerable in our communities, particularly those who may be thrown into
unemployment by the contraction in export industries such as garment
manufacturing, construction and tourism; migrant workers, who may be forced to
return home from working in neighboring countries in the region. Moreover, the
Royal Government also has the intention to protect and support those poor rural
families with reduced income and increased burden of unemployed family members
returning from urban cities; small and micro-enterprises that deliver services
in urban areas in support of industries negatively affected by the crisis; the
already poor, employed and under-employed whose opportunities will be lost as
economic activity contracts, and young people entering the labor market in
contracting economies with few prospects of employment. We owe it to these
vulnerable groups to ensure that our responses to the crisis meet their needs
through sustained economic activity and access to employment and livelihoods,
and the development of social safety nets to provide relief and assistance to
the vulnerable groups and communities through mechanisms such as food relief and
cash transfers.
These challenges will require not only a more effective and
dynamic cooperation between the government, its development partners and the
private sector but also more effective coordination and collaboration within and
across government ministries, and the development community. In key areas such
as agriculture and rural development, and associated infrastructure development,
irrigation and water resource management, and trade facilitation, I will be
requiring much greater communication, coordination and cooperation between
relevant ministries/institutions, especially their leaders and senior officials
to ensure that development programmes are more speedily and effectively designed
and implemented, and that the supporting resources provided by our development
partners can be more speedily and effectively disbursed for implementation. This
is no easy task but the nature of this crisis means that there has never been a
greater need for us all to work together to improve our performance on this
issue.
I have talked about many of the challenges that we will face as a
result of the global economic crisis and how we must work together to address
them. However these are not the kind of challenges that Cambodia can deal with
alone. It has been said that “crisis always goes along with opportunities”. The current global
financial crisis presents opportunity for us to strengthen and expand cooperation and regional integration
in order to maximize benefit from our great economic potentials through
expanding the scale of regional market as well as trade and investment promotion
in the region. This is important to minimize our overtly dependence on external
markets and enhance our competitiveness in attracting investments from outside
into the region.
It is also imperative that we work closely with our neighbours,
in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, with the member countries of ASEAN and our
regional partners, such as China, South Korea and Japan, to seek regional solutions and strategies that will help us deal with the impact
of the crisis and to increase the pace and effectiveness of regional cooperation
and integration to make our region stronger and more resistant to future crises.
As I have emphasised at the recent ASEAN Summit in Thailand, this is critical if
we are to reduce our overdependence on external markets, and enhance our
competitiveness in attracting investment into our region. We must work together
to promote intra-regional free trade, production networks and consumption, to
develop concrete strategies to deliver on the commitment of the ASEAN
Charter to bridging the development gap in ASEAN, and to move forward on
the implementation of the Chiang Mai Initiative to strengthen the
role of regional financial mechanisms and institutions to support growth and
development, and to help protect the countries of East Asia from future external
shocks.
In the broader global arena, we must support the involvement of
China, India and Indonesia, as major developing countries that can also speak
for others in the developing world, in the G20 meeting in London in April, to
ensure the development of effective global and regional strategies in response
to the crisis, to ensure a deeper commitment in bridging the development gap,
and to ensure that development assistance commitments of the developed world to
developing world are met with the timely disbursement and implementation of
development programmes. Their effective
participation is also critical in ensuring that there is progress on the urgent
need to the reform of major international financial institutions, particularly
the IMF and the multilateral development banks, to be more effective and
responsive to the needs of developing countries, both in ASEAN and East Asia,
and elsewhere.
We must work together with other developing countries to ensure
that, in still aid-dependent economies like Cambodia, international development
partners deliver on their ODA commitments and work with recipient governments to
speed up disbursement, and ensure improved donor coordination, along with
improved across-government coordination, to fast track major infrastructure,
food security, social and other key development programmes to mitigate the
impact of the crisis on the vulnerable, and to help the recipient government
ensure that hard-earned development and poverty reduction achievements over the
past decade are not lost due to the crisis.
In the room today we have a great pool of talented people to help
Cambodia and its future – they are from the government, development partners,
research and policy institutes. I would like to take this opportunity to
encourage you all to carefully consider a number of important questions on
today’s agenda, and to share your knowledge, experiences and ideas to help
ensure that Cambodia can emerge from the deepened current crisis:
-
What are the early indications of the impact of the crisis on
Cambodia and our region, and how can we carefully monitor its impact to develop
responsive strategies, especially for the poor and vulnerable?
-
How can government, development partners, the
private sector and educational institutions work together to better respond to
Cambodia’s human resource development needs, particularly vocational skills for
a skilled labor force?
-
What strategies will enable us to best manage our way through the crisis, and to
protect and strengthen key sectors for Cambodia’s growth and development –
agriculture and rural development; tourism, infrastructure and energy to support
the broadening of our manufacturing base, real estate, property and
construction?
-
What are the priority policies and actions that should be on our agenda in
response to the crisis for collaboration between government, development
partners, the private sector and research and policy institutes?
-
How
can regional and global institutions including international financial
institutions and multilateral development banks better serve the needs of
developing countries in response to the crisis and in the prevention of future
crises?
There is much that need to be done, and much that can be achieved
with the strong commitment and cooperation of the Royal Government of Cambodia
and its development partners, the private sector, and research and policy
institutions, working together in the best interests of Cambodia.
Finally, I wish you a very productive day of knowledge sharing
and discussion, and I look forward to receiving the report of the outcomes and
recommendations of the 2009 Cambodia’s Outlook Conference. May I now announce
the opening of the conference.
EndItem.
|
|