ABSTRACT
After more than two decades of severe economic dislocation, the newly-installed Royal Government of Cambodia understandably placed a high priority on the renovation and rehabilitation of the national economy. To accomplish this, it developed an ambitious, comprehensive plan which was presented in March 1994 to the International Committee for the Reconstruction of Cambodia. The plan called for the initiation of a wide variety of new economic development programmes and projects even as Cambodia sought to consolidate gains achieved from earlier economic reforms. The results of this approach in the first one and a half years of nomic its implementation, a period which the Cambodian Government itself described as crucial to the longer term success of the plan, have been very mixed. Modest success in some economic policies and sectors has been accompanied by less than desirable results in others. More importantly, the checkered progress achieved in the economic sphere has not been accompanied by similar advances in the political arena. The failure of the government to support and build upon the democratic precepts and institutions outlined in the 1993 Constitution threatens to undermine the entire economic development process.
