POPULATION
According to population projections based on the
General Population Census of Cambodia 1998 and
the Inter-censal Population Survey 2004, the
population of Cambodia in 2005 is 13.8 million,
of which 51.5 percent are females, and growing
at an estimated rate of 1.65 percent per annum.
The national average population density is 75
persons per kilometer. Around 84 of the
population live in rural areas. Cambodia's urban
population (16 percent of the total) is
principally located in Phnom Penh, Battambang,
Kampong Cham, Kampong Chhnang, Siem Reap and
Sihanouk Ville.
Phnom Penh has an estimated
population of 1.165 million and an annual rate
of growth of around 1.7 percent. Regionally, the
distribution of the population is highly skewed
towards:
six provinces located in the central
plains and around the capital, which contain
close to 60 percent of the total population, the
provinces of Battambang and Banteay Meanchey
bordering Thailand in the west, where over 10
percent of the total population resides and Svay
Rieng province bordering Vietnam in the
south-east, with another 5 percent of the
population. In contrast, other provinces and in
particular Ratanakiri and Mondolkiri in the
northeast are very sparsely populated (about I
percent of total population).
Ethnicity, Language and Religion
The population consists of 90 percent Khmer, 5
percent each of Chinese and Vietnamese and
smaller numbers of Chams, Burmese and hill
tribes. The ethnic groups that constitute
Cambodian society possess a number of economic
and demographic commonalities, for example,
Chinese merchants live mainly in urban centers
and play the role middlemen in the economic
cycle, but they also preserve differences in
their social and cultural institutions.
They are
concentrated mostly in central and in
southeastern Cambodia. The majority of the
inhabitants of Cambodia are settled in fairly
permanent villages near the major bodies of
water in the Tonle Sap Basin-Mekong Lowlands
region.
The Khmer Loeu live in widely scattered
villages that are the abandoned when cultivated
land in the vicinity is exhausted. The
permanently settled Khmer and Cham villages are
usually located on or near the banks of a river
or other bodies of water. Cham villages are
usually made up almost entirely of Cham, but
Khmer villages, especially in central and in
southeastern Cambodia, typically include sizable
Chinese communities.
The major differences among the groups lie in
social organization, language, and religion.
Theravada Buddhism is the predominant religion
of Cambodia, and virtually all Khmers are
Buddhists. Cambodians are religiously tolerant
and a number of other religions are freely
practiced. Christianity is practiced by various
ethnic groups, especially the Vietnamese, and
Islam is the main religion of the Chams.
Buddhism originated in what is now North India
and Nepal during the sixth century B.C.
Theravada Buddhism is a tolerant,
non-prescriptive religion that does not require
belief in a supreme being. Its precepts require
that each individual take full responsibility
for his own actions and omissions.
Buddhism is
based on three concepts: dharma (the doctrine of
the Buddha, his guide to right actions and
belief); karma (the belief that one's life now
and in future lives depends on one's own deeds
and misdeeds and that as an individual one is
responsible for, and rewarded on the basis of,
the sum total of one's acts and missions in all
one's incarnations, past and present, and sangha,
the ascetic community within which man can
improve his karma.
The Buddhist salvation is Nirvana, a final
extinction of one's self. Nirvana may be
attained by achieving good karma through earning
much merit and avoiding misdeeds. A Buddhist's
pilgrimage through existence is a constant
attempt to distance himself or herself from the
world and finally to achieve complete
detachment, or Nirvana.
The fundamentals of
Buddhist doctrine are the Four Noble Truths:
suffering exists; craving (or desire) is the
cause of suffering; release from suffering can
be achieved by stopping all desire; and
enlightenment-Buddha hood can be attained by
following the Noble Eightfold Path (right views,
right intention, right speech, right action,
right livelihood, right effort, right
mindfulness, and right concentration), which
constitutes the middle way between sensuality
and ascetics. Enlightenment consists of knowing
these truths.
The average layperson cannot hope
for Nirvana after the end of life but can, by
complying, as best he or she is able to, with
the doctrine's rules of moral conduct-hope to
improve his or her karma and thereby better his
condition in the next incarnation.
The Cham people in Cambodia have descended from
refugees of the Kingdom of Champa, which once
ruled much of Vietnam between Gao Ha in the
north and Bien Hoa in the south. The Cambodian
Chams are divided into two groups based on their
religious practices, the orthodox and the
traditional Muslims.
The orthodox groups, which
make up about one-third of the total number of Chams in the country, are located mainly in the
Phnom Penh, Oudong area and in the provinces of
Takeo and Kampot. The traditional Cham are
scattered throughout the midsection of the
country in the provinces of Battambang, Kampong
Thom, Kampong Chnang, and Pursat.
The Chams of
both groups typically live in villages inhabited
only by other Chams. The villages may be along
the shores of watercourses, or they may be
inland. The inhabitants of the river villages
engage in fishing and in growing vegetables.
They trade fish to local Khmer for rice. The
women in these villages earn money by weaving.
The Chams who live in land support themselves by
various means, depending on the villages. Some
villages specialize in metalworking, while
others raise fruit trees or vegetables. The Cams
often serve as butchers of cattle for their
Khmer Buddhist neighbors and are, in some area,
regarded as skillful water buffalo and ram
breeders.
The Khmer Loeu are the non- Khmer highland
tribes in Cambodia. The Khmer Loeu are found
mainly in the northeastern provinces of
Ratanakiri. Steung Treng. Mondalkiri and Kratie.
Most Khmer Loeu live in scattered temporary
villages that have only a few hundred
inhabitants.
These villages usually are governed
by a council of local elders or by a village
headman. The Khmer Loeu cultivate a wide variety
of plants, but the main crop is dry or upland
rice grown by the slash-and-burn method. Hunting
fishing and gathering supplement the cultivated
vegetable foods in the Khmer Loeu diet.
Houses
vary from huge multi-family longhouses to small
single-family structures. They may be built
close to the ground or on stilts. The major
Khmer Loeu groups in Cambodia are the Kuy,
Phnong, Stieng, Brao, Pear, Jarai, and Rade. All
but the last two speak Mon-Khmer languages.
About 160,000 Kuy currently live in the northern
Cambodian provinces of Kampong Thom, Preah
Vihear, and Steung Treng as well as in adjacent
Thailand.
The Chinese in Cambodia form the country's
largest ethnic minority. Sixty percent of the
Chinese are urban dwellers, engaged mainly in
commerce, while the other 40 percent are rural
residents working as shopkeepers, as buyers and
processors of rice, palm sugar, fruit, and fish,
and as money lenders.
The Chinese in Cambodia
represent five major linguistic groups, the
largest of which is the Teochiu (accounting for
about 60 percent) followed by the Cantonese
(accounting for about 20 percent), the Hokkien
(accounting for about 7 percent), and the Hakka
and the Hainanese (each accounting for during
the Khmer Rouge years had left it near destitute
in both economic infrastructure and human
capital.
An estimated 39 percent of Cambodians
lived below the poverty line in 19931. However,
since 1993 Cambodia has made significant
advances in rebuilding its political, economic
and social infrastructure.
Three general
elections have been held over the past decade
and a degree of political stability has been
achieved. However, despite considerable effort
by the RGC, in partnership with bilateral and
multilateral development partners, to improve
living standards and the quality of life of the
Cambodian people, Cambodia still has one of the
highest poverty rates in Southeast Asia
(estimated at around 35 percent of total poverty
and 20 percent of food poverty in 2004)3. With a
Human Development Index score of 0.543 ranks it
is currently ranked 130th out of 173 countries
internationally, and the worst but one in
Southeast Asia.
Gender inequality and access to
education and health services also continue to
be major challenges. Cambodia has one of the
highest prevalence rates for HIV / AIDS, with an
estimated 164,000 persons living with the
condition.
Cambodia's population has rebounded sharply in
the past decade, growing from an estimated 9.3
million4 in 1993 to 14.3 million5 in 2007.
However, 55 percent of the population are aged
19 years or less. Total employment in 1993 was
an estimated 3.9 million I.
The agriculture
sector accounted for 81 percent of employment
(mostly subsistence farmers), industry sector
for 3 percent, and services sector for 16
percent. By 2004, total employment had increased
to 7.5 million6.
The agriculture sector
accounted for approximately 60.3 percent of
employment, industry sector for 12.5 percent,
and services sector for 27.2 percent.
An
estimated 225,000 new jobseekers join the labor
force each year and most employed persons are
multiple jobholders. The underemployment rate is
estimated to have grown from 28 percent in 2000
to 38 percent in 2001.
Child labor is also
significant, with just under 53 percent of
children between the ages of 5 and 17 years of
age involved in some form of economic activity7.
Roughly 3 out 10 of these children work in the
industry and services sectors.
Cambodia is a small economy, with real Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) in 2005 of around 21,812
billion Riels (US$ 5.3 billion) and real per
capita income of 1.58 million Riels (US$ 385)
per annum8. While GDP growth has averaged around
9 percent per annum in recent years, GDP per
capita growth has only averaged around 7
percent.
This has resulted in a widening gap
between the rural poor and the relatively better
off urban population. The economic base is
shifting away from agriculture, fisheries and
forestry, with the sector accounting for around
31.4 percent of GDP.
The industry sector has
continued to grow strongly and now accounts for
around 27 percent of GDP, with the textiles,
garments and footwear industries accounting for
55 percent of the sector. The services sector is
the largest sector in the economy and accounts
for 36 percent of GDP and is largely drive!); by
the tourism industry.
Most of the economic
growth since 1995 has been due to The growth in
the textiles, garments and footwear industries.
While consumer price inflation is estimated to
have been stable at around 2 percent in recent
years, there has been a significant increase in
consumer prices over 2005, due mainly to
significantly higher increases in the consumer
prices of beef, diesel, fish, gasoline,
kerosene, pork, poultry, and rice.9
The Riel has
continued to depreciate against the currencies
of major trading partners, at around 1 percent
on average per annum against the US dollar in
recent years and around 4 percent in 2005.10
From an environment and natural resources
perspective, extensive overexploitation of
Cambodia's fisheries and forests has taken place
over the last decade. The authorities recognize
the need for effective fisheries and forestry
management in future years in order for these
industries to survive in the long-term.
Agricultural land use has expanded considerably
over this time, in line with the population
growth. However, only limited resources have
been available to improve irrigation systems and
over 80 percent of agriculture is still rainfall
dependent 11.
Given the high levels of poverty and the various
tax exemptions and concessions given to
businesses in order to attract foreign
investors, the potential revenue base for the
RGC is very small. Domestic revenue in 2005 was
estimated at 12.0 percent of GDP or US$ 641
million. Approximately 27.2 percent of domestic
revenue carne from non-tax revenue and capital
revenue.
Foreign financing in the form of aid,
grants and soft loans accounted for the
remainder of the budget. Customs and excise
duties accounted for 30 percent 0 tax revenue.
In following up on the Millennium Declaration,
Cambodia has launched several initiatives to
meet its global and national commitment to fight
extreme poverty, including several institutional
reforms. The RGC Rectangular Strategy and the
National Poverty Reduction Strategy builds upon
a policy stance of economic growth and poverty
reduction.
The reform agenda of the RGC
essentially focuses on a deepening of economic
reforms and macroeconomic stability, including
fiscal and monetary reforms, trade and
investment promotion, administrative reforms,
military demobilization, and improved fishery
and forestry management.
The RGC has identified
four priority sectors: education, health, rural
development and agriculture, and major programs
of economic and social infrastructure
development are underway. A Governance Action
Plan is being implemented with a set of actions
to be taken to enhance governance in key areas
such as judicial and legal system,
anti-corruption and public finance.
