Cambodia’s manufacturing industries are experiencing a shortage of skilled labour, especially at the high and mid-skill levels. In the three industrial sectors discussed here, most companies hire low-skilled and low-educated workers who do not have formal vocational skills development (VSD) qualifications. They believe that good quality, industry-specific VSD training would improve the performance of workers, but that the existing Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programmes are of low quality and little relevance to their needs. Thus, they value […]

Cambodian higher education finance is archaic and inappropriate for creating a robust and responsive higher education system. The customary practice of line item budgeting is also obsolete. Many countries in the region have long moved towards block grants and some have recently incorporated performance-based funding. In Cambodia, bureaucratic financial management has created many loopholes and obstacles, including slow disbursement of funds, excessive and rigid regulation, and ineffective and efficient use of resources. However, any move towards new funding modalities must […]

Compared with those of its more advanced ASEAN peers, Cambodia’s higher education system is still in its infancy. Its higher education governance, financing and financial management are neither sophisticated nor robust enough to deliver high-quality, relevant higher education to the society and economy. Higher education institutions have mushroomed amid inadequate regulation, supervision and support to meet national needs. The current legal framework for higher education has perpetuated an inefficient, fragmented and reactive regulatory regime. Similarly, the development of the subsector […]

This publication is a collection of 11 original research papers on six themes: earnings inequality; labour market regulation and wage setting; safety nets for low-income, low-skilled workers; private sector engagement in skills development; implications for labour market policies and institutions of the ASEAN Economic Community; and strategies to scale up investment in programs that support decent job creation and skills training for young people. These themes cover crucial aspects of the labour market in the region and for the target […]

The focus of this report is on household poverty escapes and what explains why some households escape poverty and remain out of poverty (sustainable poverty escape, or resilience), while other households escape poverty only to fall back into poverty (transitory poverty escape) and still other descend into poverty for the first time (impoverishment). Analysis of four rounds of the panel Agriculture, Rural Development and Poverty Reduction Survey in Cambodia spanning 2008-2017 for this case study reveals that just under one-fifth […]