As Cambodia launches $36.6bn building drive, China, Japan fight for spoils

 Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has unveiled a 174-project master plan that has attracted bids by rival powers.

Cambodia is aiming to becoming a high-income nation by 2050 [Paula Bronstein/Getty Images]

Phnom Penh, Cambodia Cambodia is pushing for an infrastructural renaissance, but it will need some help from its friends abroad to chip away at an estimated price tag of $36.6bn.

That was the final sum calculated by the Cambodian government and published earlier this year in a 174-project master plan that would overhaul the national transportation and logistics network within an ambitious timeframe of just a decade.

The goal to crisscross the kingdom with expressways, high-speed rail lines and other works fits closely with the state’s longstanding wish of becoming an upper-middle-income country in 2030 and a high-income nation by 2050.

Since the unopposed ascension last year of Prime Minister Hun Manet – the son of former Prime Minister Hun Sen, the country’s leader of nearly 40 years – his new government of aspiring technocrats has pressed forward with the building campaign, beseeching foreign allies for closer ties and increased investment while assuring the public of big things to come.

“We shall not withdraw from setting our targets in building road and bridge infrastructure,” Hun Manet said at a February groundbreaking for a Phnom Penh bridge funded with a Chinese loan.

“Roads are like blood vessels to feed the organs wherever it goes … soon we will have the ability not only to just possess [material things] but also for Cambodians to build by themselves infrastructural marvels such as bridges, highways and subways

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has embarked on a major infrastructure drive [Athit            Perawongmetha/Reuters]

Cambodia has experienced more than two decades of rapid economic growth with some of the worst infrastructure in Southeast Asia, according to the World Bank’s logistics performance index.

With the bank predicting accelerating gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the years ahead, Cambodia’s already stretched transportation system could be strained to breaking point.

While the new prime minister looks to cement his own status after his father’s long rule, making progress on hard infrastructure will present a test for his governance as well as the traditional Cambodian balancing act of international relations.

Rolling out the master plan with a to-do list of projects large and small could present an opportunity to benefit from geopolitical rivalries as foreign partners jostle for influence – especially as competition intensifies between two of its largest benefactors, China and Japan.




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