My aunt was assigned to sew clothes, and I was assigned to repair sewing machines in the Childrens Unit at Office K-9. According to a Khmer Rouge spokesman at the French embassy on May 10, the evacuation was necessary to "revolutionize" and to "purify" the urban residents and to annihilate Phnom Penh, which "Cambodian peasants regarded as a satellite of foreigners, first French, and then American, and which has been built with their sweat without bringing them anything in exchange." Intense combat in the nation's most densely populated farming areas caused a large segment of the peasant population to flee to cities and to towns. Gems and timber were transported into Thailand, as part of secret trade that has brought in millions of dollars for the Khmer Rouge and a select of group of Thai businessmen and army officers. There was an "Angkorian" component to economic policy. Food shortages arose as insurgents interrupted the transportation of crops from the countryside to the main marketing centers. Trade organizations were to be perfected at all levels, and socialist trading networks were to be expanded in all localities. And like its neighbors, Cambodia is suffering from rising food prices and a slowing economy. In some cases, a ditch was dug with a bulldozer and workers were pushed in by the bulldozer and buried alive. Since I was living near my grandmother, every three nights I would ask my unit chief if I could spend the night with her. Thus, the government added a fourth component--private economy--to the economic system and legitimized it with a constitutional amendment in February 1986. *, The economy of Cambodia in the late 1980s was dominated by subsistence agriculture; the industrial sector was still in its infancy. The small middle class with money to spend in the capital's new malls could shrink. The Khmer Rouge adopted a fanatical and doctrinaire self-reliance, and the Cambodian people and nation were ravaged by it.
[Source: Philip Shenon, New York Times], The First Five-Year Program of Socioeconomic Restoration and Development (1986-90), or First Plan, originated in February 1984, when the heads of the state planning commissions of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia met in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and agreed to coordinate their 1986 to 1990 economic plans. As private market activities resumed, the population of Phnom Penh grew from 50,000 in 1978--the last year of the Pol Pot regime--to 700,000. Inflation, which had not passed 10 percent before this year, may be approaching 20 percent, according to some estimates. Rice, measured in tins, became the most important medium of exchange, although people also bartered gold, jewelry, and other personal possessions. Growth was 9.4 percent from 1998 to 2008. *, At the end of 1978, when Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, the ensuing turbulence completely disrupted the nation's economic activity, particularly in the countryside, which once again became a war theater traversed by a massive population movement. It consisted of solidarity groups in agriculture, fishing, forestry, and handicrafts. Party congresses adopted these policies at meetings in January 1979, May 1981, and October 1985. Unlike China and Vietnam, which had introduced collectivization gradually over several years, Cambodia imposed the system hastily and without preparation. According to Rith, a Chinese official (La Mengqiang?)
", "For the Thai Army," wrote Shenon, "Pol Pot is the best sort of business partnerreliable and publicity shy." As explained by Deputy Premier Ieng Sary, the regime was "pursuing radical transformation of the country, with agriculture as the base. *, On August 12, 1975, fewer than four months after the Khmer Rouge had taken power, Khieu Samphan claimed that, within a year or two, Cambodia would have sufficient food supplies and would be able to export some of its products. *, Cambodia made progress in improving the country's irrigation network and in expanding its rice cultivation area. (Cambodia needs at least 1.9 million tons of rice annually for a population of 6.5 million). Most of the killing took place when the airport was almost finished. Gold was the only really reliable means of exchange, much of it earned by siphoning off American aid during the Lon Nol government. Under Lon Nol's direction, Phnom Penh limited the control and the authority of the state export-import agency (Socit nationale d'exportation et d'importation--SONEXIM), which had been established in 1964 to administer foreign trade, to denationalize banks and industries, to encourage private foreign investments, and to allow greater private participation in the economy. According to Rith, Thuon was a link of Hng Thun Hak, a Khmer Serei, and they conspired with Hing Kunthun, the director of the Khmer Commercial Bank, to get riels out of the country so that they could be spent once money was put back into circulation. In an eleven-point program promulgated shortly before the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, the front articulated the economic guidelines that would mark its tenure in power. To achieve this goal in record time, large communes comprising several villages replaced village cooperatives, which had formed in the areas controlled by the Khmer Rouge in 1973 and which had spread throughout the country by 1975.
With revenues from agriculture we are building industry which is to serve the development of agriculture." [Source: Library of Congress, December 1987] Now economic diversification is at the heart of the governments sustainable growth plan. Although Cambodia resumed diplomatic relations with a number of nations, the new government informed the UN General Assembly on October 6, 1975, that it was neutral and economically self-sufficient and would not ask for aid from any country. That number is likely to continue to increase, at least in part because of renovations that are to be completed next year on the cross-country train route that connects Phnom Penh to the temple region. ++, Ker Munthit of Associated Press wrote: A former Khmer Rouge soldier himself, Hun Sen has embraced free-market policies that have made Cambodia's economy one of the fastest growing in Asia, expanding at 11 percent in each of the past three years. Conditions were most primitive in the new economic zones, where city dwellers had been sent to farm virgin soil and where thousands of families lived in improvised barracks. The economy has been growing mostly based on income from garment manufacturing and tourism, as well as by a real estate boom that is bringing in foreign investors. The government after the Khmer Rouge initially advocated semi-socialist policies. It declared that the nation's economic system had three main parts--the state economy, the collective economy, and the family economy, and that each of these parts "had its own significant role." In short, the country's material and technical bases had not been restored to prewar levels. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit. Second, Cambodia was a cashless nation; the government confiscated all republican era currency. In the old days, economic institutions were largely feudal and colonial in their organization and administration. The plan was intended to open a new phase of the Cambodian revolution; it gave highest priority to agricultural production, calling it "the first front line," and focused on the four sectors of food, rubber, fishing, and timber.
As the war progressed, Lon Nol's government aimed major economic measures mainly at improving the overall food supply situation and at maintaining public confidence in the continued availability of essential consumer items. In 1991, the government stopped describing itself as communist and began embracing market-oriented reforms. Questions or comments, e-mail ajhays98@yahoo.com, Cambodia - Government, Infrastructure, Economics. An estimated 10,000 to 50,000 workers died during the construction of the airport. Extreme measures were taken. The government didnt spend beyond it means and some foreign inventors showed up. This stipulation imposed by Phnom Penh also had the effect of holding down the scale of many aid projects and the amounts of loans extended to the Cambodian government.
There were no shops, post offices, telephones, or telegraph services. It did not set industrial production targets, except that for electrical output, which was projected to reach 300 million kilowatt hours per year in 1990. Even though the Thai government banned trade with the Khmer Rouge the government still authorized permits for Thai companies to import timber from taken from Khmer Rouge-controlled areas of Cambodia. *, On September 27, 1977, in a major speech celebrating the anniversary of the Kampuchean (or Khmer) Communist Party (KCP), Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot asserted that, "Our entire people, our entire revolutionary army and all our cadres live under a collective regime through a communal support system." Instead of producing high value items that were simple to grow and sell, everybody had to concentrate on paddy, which requires enormous experience and skill to grow but did not fetch a good price. Although the 1970-75 war and the evacuation of the cities had destroyed or idled most industry, small contingents of workers were allowed to return to the urban areas to reopen some plants. There also were reports that the government was stockpiling rice in preparation for war with Vietnam and exporting it to China in exchange for military supplies. *, Economic rehabilitation has been precarious and has been plagued by uncontrollable factors, such as adverse weather and serious security problems. Children under the age of fifteen grew vegetables or raised poultry. This endeavor was a continuation of the policies he had enacted as head of the government of "national salvation" in August 1969. Phnom Penh became a ghost town of only about 10,000 people. In the late 1980s, key economic indicators were missing or were difficult to reconcile, particularly for the Pol Pot period (1975-78). This development, along with the continued lack of openness in Cambodian politics, has made Cambodia's prospects for democratization dim, as well as its chances for sustained economic growth. [Source: Lonely Planet]. In the late 1980s, government policies fundamentally relied upon the nation's own sparse resources--chiefly agriculture, a nascent industrial base, and modest foreign aid from Comecon countries and nongovernmental international organizations. He believed such cooperation would be "an indispensable factor" in the development of agriculture and of forestry in Cambodia. Indeed, during the first decade that he was in power in newly independent Cambodia (1953-63), the prince carefully practiced his "purer form of neutrality between East and West" in seeking foreign economic assistance for development. *, Khmer Rouges Radical Economic Revolution, The Khmer Rouge, as soon as it took power on April 17, 1975, emptied Phnom Penh (of its approximately 2 million residents) as well as other cities and towns, and forced the people into the countryside. Economic revitalization also occurred at Kampong Saom (formerly known as Sihanoukville), Cambodia's only seaport and its second largest city, which resumed its pre-1975 industrial and shipping activities. The plan implied that, into the 1990s, exports would have to consist principally of agricultural and forestry products, to which some value might be added by low-technology processing. Therefore, Pol Pot's policy of relying on national strength and rapid construction of water works to build the country quickly to preclude a Vietnamese invasion made sense, even though this policy entailed both good and bad aspects. The new economic policies of the Khmer Republic gradually reversed the pattern of state socialism that had formed the keystone of Sihanouk's domestic policies. A typical worker was given one bowl or rice gruel to eat a day and forced to work for 18 hours digging canals and making dikes. The government later gave higher priority to the productive sectors of agriculture and industry in economic plans for the 1968-72 periods; however, because of war, the government did not implement these plans. Currency was abolished, and domestic trade or commerce could be conducted only through barter. He rejected further assistance from the United States, because Washington supported the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and from Thailand, with which Cambodia had continuous frontier disputes.