Cambodia’s New Growth Strategy: Priorities for High-Quality and Sustainable Development
The 16th Cambodia Annual Outlook Conference 2025 (COC25) convened leaders from government, business, civil society, and academia to debate Cambodia’s strategic growth path amid global uncertainties. Anchored in CDRI’s flagship report, Cambodia’s New Growth Strategy, the conference underscored the need for a policy shift—moving beyond high growt...
A New Growth Strategy for Cambodia: Economic Scenarios
Cambodia was one of the fastest growing economies in the world prior to the pandemic. Given this strong performance, The Royal Government of Cambodia’s Vision 2050 aims for the country to reach high-income country status by mid-century. The COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a troubled domestic real estate sector have made it chal...
Cambodia Economic Diversification Pathways
Cambodia’s rapid economic growth over the past two decades has been driven primarily by structural transformation, as labour shifted from agriculture to higher-productivity jobs in manufacturing and services. However, the country’s growth model—dominated by garment manufacturing, tourism, and construction—is now facing limitations, necessitating a...
Delivering the skills for Cambodia’s clean energy transition
The clean energy transition presents a significant opportunity to create a dynamic new workforce for Cambodia, spanning roles from highly specialised urban planners to technical engineers. However, there is currently a significant skills gap that must be addressed if Cambodia is to maximise the benefits from the shift to green energy. Cambodia has...
Why does rural resilience for climate-induced migration response matter?
Climate-induced migration in rural communities represents a growing challenge for Cambodia socioeconomic development. Climate change leads to water scarcity and adversely affects agricultural production, reducing farmers’ incomes and destroying livelihoods, thus making rural people more vulnerable. The income loss from crop damage caused by extreme...
Overcoming Constraints for Effective Policy Implementation
Over the past three decades, practical policy reform has been part of Cambodia’s political stability and economic success. There are also examples where policy changes were introduced and effectively implemented, and demonstrate strong capabilities for mobilisa¬tion, organisation, management, and imple¬mentation. Actualising new policies and strate...
Climate Change, Gender, and Social Analysis for Cambodia’s New Growth Strategy
In pursuit of sustaining growth in the economy, Cambodia also strives to enhance resilience, inclusiveness and sustainability. This paper discusses the key climate, gender and social issues that need to be addressed in order to achieve this goal. Specifically, the following issues need to be tackled: (i) high carbon footprints of the growth sectors...
Bridging the Academic Disparities between Boys and Girls in Cambodian Secondary Education
Key Highlights Girls in Cambodia consistently outperform boys academically, a trend observed since the 2014 national exam reforms, with boys facing higher risks of dropout. Boys are disproportionately affected by weaker academic engagement, higher absenteeism, economic pressures, and greater freedom, leading to socially undesirable activities...
A Macroeconomic Review: Cambodia’s Current State and Future Outlook
Economic Performance and Outlook:Cambodia's real economy grew by 5.1% in 2022, driven by strong performance in garment and emerging non-garment industries, alongside a gradual tourism recovery. On the other hand, key sectors such as construction are yet to recover.Inflation reached 5.4% in 2022, driven by rising food prices, core inflation, and oil...
Increasing the Inclusiveness, Resiliency and Sustainability of Economic Growth in Cambodia
To realise its aspirations to become an upper middle-income country by 2030 and a high-income country by 2050, Cambodia has to pursue inclusive growth that is also sustainable and resilient. This is the type of growth that generates sustainable jobs in the manufacturing and services sectors, and fair and consistent returns for the self-employed, in...