China will lend $4.11 billion to Cambodia starting in 2023, Khmer Times writes on June 28.
With this figure, China is the country’s largest creditor. The second and third places are occupied by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank, respectively.
But as Cambodia receives more debt financing from other sources, the proportion of China’s outstanding debt in Cambodia’s total debt has fallen, from 40% in 2022 to 36.7% in 2023.
As for Cambodia’s second-largest creditor, the Asian Development Bank, its debt of $2.3 billion accounts for 23.65 percent of the government’s total external debt. And the debt of the third-largest creditor, the World Bank, at $1.3 billion, accounts for 11.8 percent of total debt for 2023. Cambodia’s fourth and fifth creditors are Japan and the Republic of Korea, which account for 11.2 percent and 5.1 percent of total outstanding debt, respectively.
In a recent report, the World Bank noted that there has been a significant shift in government priorities. If ten years ago loan funds were allocated to Cambodia exclusively for infrastructure projects in the country, today the funds provided allow the implementation of larger-scale projects. The World Bank report notes that in the priority sector, more funds are allocated to the development of education and healthcare.
In its report, the World Bank noted: “Currently, funding covers a wide range of areas, including funding for policy development, general and higher education, socio-economic land distribution, agricultural diversification, equity and health improvement, road connectivity , improving livelihoods, water supply and disaster relief..
Of the total disbursements of $1.5 billion in 2023, 63% was allocated to the country’s public infrastructure sector, which includes transportation, energy, irrigation, water supply and other projects. And 36.9% of funding went to priority non-infrastructure sectors such as agriculture, healthcare and education.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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