Cambodia labeled "country for sale"

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Thailand (IPS/GIN) — U.S. energy giant Chevron is under fire for failing to answer questions about how much it paid to secure rights to drill for offshore oil in corruption-ridden Cambodia. Gavin Hayman, campaigns director for London-based anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness (GW), said a small, powerful elite has "captured the country's emerging oil and mineral sectors" for personal gain. Hayman made this and other, similar comments after GW recently published a report, Country for Sale, warning of a corruption disaster as Cambodia "appears to be on the verge of an oil, gas, and minerals windfall."  
"Cambodia today is a country for sale," the 68-page report says. "Having made their fortune from logging much of the country's forests resources, Cambodia's elite have diversified their commercial interests to encompass other forms of state assets ... Oil company contracts and information on concession allocations are a closely guarded secret within the CNPA [Cambodian National Petroleum Authority].
"With the exception of Chevron, the government of Cambodia has not publicly announced the names of those companies to whom it has awarded oil and gas exploration rights," the report states. "Block A was awarded to U.S. oil company Chevron in 2002. Chevron's activities in Block A are the most advanced of all oil companies currently operating in Cambodia."
GW estimates that oil will start flowing in 2011 and peak in 2021. Proceeds range from $174 million in the first year to $1.7 billion when extraction peaks. But GW doubts that income from Cambodia's natural resources will flow to those who need it most — the country's millions still mired in poverty following nearly two decades of bloody conflict and brutal rule by the Khmer Rouge. 
Over 35 percent of Cambodia's 13.3 million people live on less than $1 a day. Life expectancy is 58 years, and nearly a third of children under 5 are malnourished. Yet for a small cabal of political, military, and economic elite, the period since the 1991 peace accords has been a journey on the road to immense, ill-gotten wealth. For example, GW said that Cambodian elite raked in over $13 million through illegal logging in 2007.
In 2007, global anti-graft watchdog Transparency International ranked Cambodia 162nd among 179 countries surveyed for corruption, making it the most corrupt country in Asia after Burma. The problem stems from a lack of independent bodies backed by strong laws and resources to curb corruption. The Cambodian government under increasingly authoritarian Prime Minster Hun Sen has yet to implement strong anti-corruption measures sought by the country's foreign donors, who fund nearly half the national budget.
Activists like GW's Hayman also accuse international financial institutions like the World Bank for being complicit in the corrupt culture of Cambodia's rising kleptocrats.
The Bank, though, said in a statement from its Phnom Penh office that it "shares many of the concerns [non-governmental organizations or NGOs] have raised about the government's management of extractive industry in Cambodia ... our dialogue with the government includes discussion of policy reforms that will help to ensure that any revenue generated through extractive industries benefits the people of Cambodia."