Cambodia is seeking $500 million in aid

Cambodia is seeking $500 million in aid

PHNOM PENH (Reuter): Finance Minister Keat Chhon said yesterday the government was seeking US$540 million in aid from a meeting of international donors in Paris next month.

"This year in our budget we just put a figure of $150 million from international funding, but we need $540 million for our present needs for 1995," he told Reuters.

"We are realistic, we know that we can mobilize only $150 (million), but we need $540 (million). we have to go for that (figure) to the ICORC."

The International Committee for the Reconstruction of Cambodia (ICORC) is scheduled to meet in mid-March for the fourth time since a peace agreement aimed at ending two decades of civil war and strife in Cambodia was signed in 1991.

Last year, meeting in Tokyo, the group promised Cambodia more than $800 million in aid. Donor nations pledged more than $1 billion in both 1992 and 1993.

"We are preparing a draft to ICORC and the message we have to send to ICORC is that this government and this country should deserve aid," said Chhon.

He said he was not optimistic for the prospects of getting all the funding because of expensive natural disasters in both Japan, Cambodia's biggest donor, and in Western Europe earlier this year.

Japan forecasts that repairing the damage inflicted by an earthquake which devastated the port city of Kobe last month and killed more than 5,000 people will cost nearly $100 billion.

Floods in Western Europe, especially the Netherlands, also hit countries which donate aid to Cambodia.

But Chhon said he was confident that the flow of aid to Cambodia would continue the poor country would reach its goal of sustainable economic growth.

"I am confident that aid will not stop," he said.

"Even with flood and drought, we scored last year 5.2 percent growth of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and this year we expect to reach 6.7 percent," he said.