As Cambodia launches $36.6bn building drive, China, Japan fight for spoils
Al Jazeera
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has unveiled a 174-project master plan that has attracted bids by rival powers.
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.
