Khmer Intelligence News
Statistics on poverty in Cambodia are misleading. Excerpt from World Bank report “Cambodia: Halving Poverty By 2015?” published in 2006 : “The latest survey shows that now 35 percent of Cambodians live below the national poverty line, down from an estimated 47 percent a decade earlier.”
But the World Bank’s methodology in defining poverty line obviously clashes with realities of poverty in Cambodia. Costs of living have dramatically increased over the last few years and several public services have been recently privatized. Many farmers have lost their land.
Today, virtually nobody can survive on only 50 US cents (2,090 Riels) a day, which is at best a starvation line. In the Philippines and most developing countries in Asia and Africa, poverty line is estimated at 2 US$ a day. With a similar yardstick, at least 80 percent of Cambodia’s population of 14 million would be rightly considered as poor or extremely poor.
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