Soaring food, oil prices not affect Cambodia’s annual poverty alleviation: finance minister

PHNOM PENH, May 9 (Xinhua)—Cambodia is still firmly confident that it can attain its annual rate of poverty reduction by at least one percent this year despite skyrocketing food and oil prices, said Cambodian finance minister Keat Chhon said Monday.
The commodities prices issued by the Commerce Ministry on Monday showed that since the start of this year, the price of pork increased by 41 percent, fish by 17 percent, beef by 15 percent, chicken by 8 percent and rice by 3 percent, while the price of gasoline rose by 12 percent to 1.39 U.S. dollars a liter on Monday.
The International Monetary Fund forecast recently that Cambodia’s inflation rate this year would hit 6.5 percent, up from 3.1 percent last year.
“As the policy maker, we are really concerned over soaring food and oil prices, but they’re globally soaring, not Cambodia alone,” the minister told reporters.
As over 80 percent of Cambodian population is farmers and relies totally on agricultural products and livestock as the sources of income, the rise in food prices is benefiting them, he said.
Chhon continued saying that the hike prices in food and commodities will not refrain the country from its efforts to alleviate poverty rate by at least one percent a year.
“Though in 2009, it was the worst year for Cambodian economy, the GDP (gross domestic products) growth was just 0.1 percent, we were still able to reduce the poverty rate more than one percent in that year,” he said.
“Now, the economic situation is quite well, Cambodia expects the growth of at least 6 percent this year, so we expect to cut the poverty rate more than one percent this year and next year as well,” he said, adding the country will be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal target of reducing poverty to 19.5 percent by 2015.
The minister said that the country’s poverty line rate has declined from 35 percent in 2004 to 27.4 percent in 2010. The people living below poverty line are defined by an income of less than 1.25 U.S. dollars a day.
He said that in the national strategic plan for poverty reduction, the country boosts the development of agriculture through irrigation system building and processing plants; construct infrastructure such as roads and bridges; accelerate the development of garment industries, tourism, and healthcare system and so on. 
Peter Brimble, a senior economist for the Asian Development Bank in Cambodia, said Monday agreed that the present rises of food and oil are still manageable and will not impact the government strategy in reducing poverty rate.
“But if the country’s inflation goes up by ten percent this year, the poverty rate will also go up by around 2.3 percentage points,” he said, adding that ADB forecast the country’s inflation at 6 percent this year.