World Bank: Legal reform critical for Cambodia
By CHRIS DECHERD, Associated Press Writer  6/14/2002

"It's absolutely critical," Bonaventure Mbida-Essama, the World Bank 's representative in Cambodia, told The Associated Press ahead of an annual meeting next week on assistance to the poverty-stricken country.

"You can't promote development without rule of law," Mbida-Essama said. "For foreign direct investment, for people working safely, it's a fundamental building stone."

For the past 10 years, foreign aid has covered more than half of the Cambodian national budget.

But donors say foreign investment — which Cambodia's struggles to attract partly because of its corrupt and ineffective legal system — will increasingly be needed as international donors divert their money to countries such as Afghanistan  and East Timor ( news - web sites).

Donors including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund ( news - web sites), the Asian Development Bank, the United States, Japan and the European Union ( news - web sites), have poured dlrs 3.7 billion into Cambodia since 1992, according to government figures.

The government will ask at the donors conference for dlrs 1.4 billion in aid over the next three years. Averaging dlrs 470 million per year, it is less than the dlrs 560 million annual grant requested a year ago.

More than one-third of Cambodia's 12 million people still live on less than dlr 1 per day.

Besides legal reform, issues such as illegal logging, democracy-building, agricultural and natural resources development and trade policy will be discussed at the three-day meeting starting Wednesday.

Donors and the government, in their plans for judicial reform, hope to stamp out widespread corruption in the legal system by raising the salaries of judges, prosecutors and other court officials.

The donors also want the government to divert funds from the army and police to the Justice Ministry, which last year received less than 0.05 percent of the state's annual budget.

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