Boom or bust?
April 11, 2008
Sam Rainsy puts Cambodia’s economic boom into perspective.
Take for example the national poverty limit, in Cambodia, the government says that one person earning an income of less that $0.50 per day is living below the poverty limit. Thus, according to the government, only 33% of the population are living under the poverty limit. On the other hand, if we set this limit to $2 per day, as is done in the Philippines, then 80% of Cambodians live below the poverty limit. I don’t see any reason to cook up the number as the PM is doing right now. Another concrete example: the jobless rate. According to the official statistics, it would be only between 1 and 2%. This means that Cambodia is doing even better than the US or France. This is completely false. But here again, the government considers that a person working half an hour in the last 7 days, is considered as employed. To me, this is not a good criterion.
April 13, 2008 at 2:01 pm
If Cambodia’s unemployment rate is at 1-2%, Cambodia is doing much, much better than any other country in the whole world. In fact jobless rate Cambodia should be 30% or higher.
April 15, 2008 at 1:50 am
This poverty-level number-cooking has gone on in the US for years, and was made an art under the Reagan administration back in the 80s (but to give credit where credit is due, I think they got the idea from M. Thatcher across the pond).
If Hun Sen wants to be fully like conservative Western leaders, he should start calling the few remaining poor people lazy, as well.
Sok sabai chhnam thmei!
April 16, 2008 at 10:29 pm
[...] are Sketchy questions the poverty statistics released by the Cambodian government Posted by Mong Palatino Share [...]
January 5, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Are we talking about PPP here? Sure in the Phillipines you may be poor living under US$2 a day, however, in Cambodia. Cambodia ranks 57th in how many people live below the poverty line whereas the Phillipines ranks in at 74: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=69. Whose to say what 50c will buy for locals in Cambodia compared to what it can buy in the Phillipines. The Cambodian government reports that 35.9% of its population live in poverty, thats over one in three. Somehow, I don’t think they are trying to put much of a rosy picture on that one because they could do a lot better then that if they were.