CAMBODIA'S slide of six places in the World Bank's latest annual ease-of-business report released Wednesday shows it is "all the more important" for the Cambodian government to press ahead with its economic-reform agenda, the bank's senior country economist for Cambodia, Stephane Guimbert, said Wednesday.
The fall to 145th of 183 economies surveyed worldwide in the bank's Doing Business 2010 report, prepared in conjunction with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), came after the country climbed 11 places in the rankings a year earlier.
The rise was at the time attributed to the passage of the Secured Transactions Law and the Law on Bankruptcy, as well as Cambodia's success in cutting import and export delays.
The reversal suggests that the pace of business-regulation reform has slowed in Cambodia even as other countries accelerated changes to remain competitive in a global market rocked by an ongoing economic crisis, the two agencies said in a media statement accompanying the report.
A record 131 economies worldwide and 17 of 24 in East Asia and the Pacific reformed business regulations between June 2008 and May 2009, the period covered by the report.
Guimbert warned that the survey captured key parts, "but not all" of the business environment and said that Cambodia has made over the past two years a number of economic reforms that were not reflected in its ranking.
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