Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen!
I think we do not have many people, so I prefer that my prepared speech kept to be distributed later.
Today, I’m very pleased Cambodia is the first country in Asia to join the SDGs mechanism. Actually, the developing countries’ biggest challenges is the infrastructure. If we review the project of development of the developing countries, it could be many heaps in the warehouse because there is no financing to do them. If we talk about infrastructure in Asia, we have Asia Highway, ASEAN Highway, and Singapore-Kunming Railway. If we mobilize all the speeches that Head of States and Governments delivered on infrastructure, the projects of those infrastructure could be stored in 2 or 3 warehouses. What is the main problem for that? It’s financing that need to support these projects. Fortunately, it is lucky for those countries that China initiated the One Belt-One Road and the Silk Road’s fund of over 40 billion USD, including the establishment of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. However, I think it is not enough, we still need to mobilize all resources from the private sector to support the projects of infrastructure development.
Seeing the importance of the investment from private sector for the sustainable development of infrastructure, we have signed the agreement for WEF’s Blended Finance Initiative. I think this is the establishment of the new initiative based on our win-win policy.
Thanks for your attention!
Q: Could you please tell me some specific areas or projects you want to get some investments from foreign investors in Cambodia? And as you know that this year ASEAN celebrates 50th anniversary, do you have any plans to extend more relationship with other Asian countries including (South)Korea?
A: Thank for your question. I would like to inform you that in 1987, Cambodia has been put four priorities into practice for 30 years, and they will continue to be our priorities. The first priority is human resource development which is very important for Cambodia. In this field, we get most participation from the private sector, as we have more than 100 universities run by private sector. Second priority is water. Cambodia is an agricultural-based country, we need irrigations, but we have very little participation from private sector in this field. Our third priority is electricity which in Cambodia, we need big fund of investment especially on the hydroelectricity. So far, we do receive investments from private sector on the producing electricity as well as the transmission lines. And the fourth priority is the infrastructure of transportations and telecommunications. So far, for the development on this sector, we have some funds from the government of (South) Korea, but no participation from private sector yet. As for now, we have three new projects including the building of new airport, the high-speed road from Phnom Penh to Sihanouk province, and the high-speed road from Phnom Penh to the Cambodia-Vietnam border. At this moment, we also need big fund to modernize the Cambodia’s railways.
I would like to welcome representative from South Africa which I also met your former President, H.E Thabo Mbeki who has been to Cambodia in 2002 then we organized the ASEAN-African Summit there.
