Cambodia education reform could help investors
The government has raised the education budget for 2017, but other reforms are needed
Legislators passed the 2017 budget on November 22 with spending increases on vocational training and education. The government plans to move Cambodia into the upper-middle-income category (as defined by the World Bank) by 2030. This will require economic diversification, particularly away from agriculture and reliance on low-skilled garment manufacturing toward higher value-added activities such as automobile assembly and semiconductor production. This will need progressively more skilled labour, requiring education reforms.
Our judgement
Education reform is under way, but will take time as the sector's culture evolves, finance is found and jobs are made available for an increasingly better-educated workforce, while the economy itself develops. Even low-skilled workers will need more technical skills to cope with the rising automation likely to come with industrialisation.
See today's CAMBODIA: Education reform could help investors.