Chinese firm to invest $3 bln in Cambodia

A Chinese company plans to pump three billion dollars into Cambodian energy, property, and aluminium processing projects

via CAAI

PHNOM PENH — A Chinese company plans to pump three billion dollars into Cambodian energy, property, and aluminium processing projects, an official said Thursday.

The proposed investment by China Inner Mongolia Erdos Hongjun Investment Co. -- a massive sum in one of the world's poorest countries -- emerged after a meeting Wednesday between the firm and Cambodia's leader in Phnom Penh.

According to Prime Minister Hun Sen's assistant Eang Sophalleth, the firm discussed plans to build a 700-megawatt coal power plant in the popular seaside resort of Sihanoukville and invest in other sectors including property.

He said the firm's president, Wang Linxiang, said the business wanted to gradually invest the money in Cambodia and Hun Sen "fully supported" the proposals.

Written off as a failed state after the devastating 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime and several decades of civil war, Cambodia used garment exports and tourism to help improve its economy.

But despite several years of double-digit economic growth before the global financial crisis, Cambodia remains desperately poor, with more than 30 percent of the country's 14 million people living on less than 50 US cents a day.

China, a former patron of the Khmer Rouge regime, now eclipses many of the impoverished country's other donors with hundreds of millions of dollars in largely unconditional aid and donated military equipment.