Annual ASEAN Economic Association conference in Cambodia

Wednesday, 16 December 2009 02:10 DAP-NEWS

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

Cambodia on Tuesday held the 34th annual conference of the federation of the ASEAN Economic Association (FAEA) focusing on impact of the global economic downturn on the ASEAN countries and mitigating the impact on the poor.

“The global economic slowdown rea- lly affected our economy and the govern- ment has set the top priority as recovering the economy of the country,” Kong Vibol, secretary of state for the Ministry of Economy and Finance, said in his opening remarks. “The government has taken actions subsequently in this bad time to help the most vulnerable people.”

Lim Sovannara, economic official for UNDP Cambodia, said that “We have concern on HIV/AIDS infection because more women are now in entertainment industry after they lost jobs in the garment sector,”, adding that there is a strong indication of rising poverty and a likely decline in children’s nutrition, as well as increased crime from the impact of the crisis. The driving economic forces of the country are agriculture, garments, construction, and tourism, but the last three have been hit by the crisis, Kong Vibol said, adding that most Cambodian garments are exported to the EU and US, markets that are now showing lower demand. “But we have potential for agricultural sector,” he said.

“Our economic growth will recover when the global economic recovery and anyway we have set up policy to attract investors here. We also have social responsibility from the impact through creating social safety network and the government also is continuing to walk with existing factors to reduce poverty in the country.”

He added that Cambodia should see economic growth of 2 percent this year.

Larry Strange, executive director of the Cambodian Development and Research Institute (CDRI), said that the forum will help strengthen integration cooperation of ASEAN in forwarding the ASEAN Economic community by 2015. ASEAN “needs to join in hands from macro economic and private sector policy to deal with this hard time,” he said.

The event is supported by the Cam-bodian Economic Association, UNDP, CDRI and the Economic Institute of Cambodia (EIC). Next year, Indonesia will become host country for this economic forum.