New Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has announced his vision to make Cambodia a high-income country by 2050. Speaking at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) business forum in Jakarta, the Western-educated leader said that Cambodia had recently launched an overarching national economic vision to “safeguard the nature of hard-gained peace and accelerate national development to achieve the milestone of becoming a high-income country by 2050”.
The vision, referred to as the “pentagon strategy”, involves developing human capital, the digital economy, and inclusivity and sustainability. Hun Manet, who took over power from his father Hun Sen last month after a lopsided general election that all opposition parties were barred from contesting, said that Cambodia has now evolved into a lower-middle-income nation with economic growth rates of 7 percent1.
In his first cabinet meeting, Hun Manet pledged wide-ranging economic reforms aimed at making Cambodia a “high-income country” by 2050. “The next 25 years will be a new cycle for Cambodia,” he said in a televised speech.
This ambitious vision has been met with both optimism and skepticism. While some see it as a sign of progress and development for the Southeast Asian country, others question the feasibility of such a goal and the lack of concrete plans for achieving it. Only time will tell if Hun Manet’s vision for Cambodia will come to fruition.
Photo Credit: Ministry of Information, Cambodia
