the citizen-viewer

As expected, Cambodia's foreign donors, who met for the last two day in Phnom Penh, have come through once again, pledging $601 million for this year, up from $504 last year. The Cambodian government had only requested $514 million at the meeting, known as the Consultative Group, or CG to those of us that follow these things.

So far, there's no indication that the donors have required any specific reforms in order for Cambodia to collect the aid package. In fact there's no indication of a lot of things -- the substance of the discussion, which countries pledged how much, whether they each have their own conditions, whose aid has gone up and whose has gone down, um, who actually was in attendance, and so forth. It's very secretive.

Before the meeting, the World Bank issued a release that said, "Participants will also assess the Joint Monitoring Indicators adopted at the last CG Meeting in December 2004 and endorsed by the Government and development partners as action items on the reform agenda, and agree upon a new set of indicators for the upcoming year."

There is also no indication yet that this assessment took place at the CG and what it concluded if it did. (I posted the above quotation to see if it disappears as they are update the release.) In the meantime, Human Rights Watch has posted a very nice chart comparing the Cambodian government's pledges of past years with the real-life results.

Ian Porter, the World Bank's country coordinator for Cambodia, said the increase reflected "significant progress" in reforming Cambodia's economy. If anyone finds out what he cited as progress, let me know. He also said that "the government needs to accelerate its reform programmes, particularly in the areas I highlighted -- anti-corruption, legal and judicial reform and natural resource management."

(Needs to or else what? I first noticed this curious use of the term "needs to" years ago when I started to work with non-profit groups. People seem to use it when there is no requirement, but they want to imply that there is. What it usually means is "I wish they would but I have no power to make them.")

In the absence of any subtantive information about the meeting, I can only surmise that the Western donors were once again cowed by the dual threats of Cambodia's turning entirely to China for the financial support that keeps Hun Sen in power and of Cambodia's transformation into Myanmar II.

Cambodia is ranked 24th worst in Transparency International's 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index, in a seven-way tie with Burundi, Republic of Congo, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea and Venezuela. 2005 was the first year Cambodia was included in the index.