Remember my rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed freakonomics post of earlier? Chuck it out the window, those numbers were indeed too good to be true. On Friday the International Monetary Fund released a new report about the state of Cambodian’s finances. Somehow, in the course of two months, it changed its mind and decided that a country whose main sources of income come from tourism and the garment industry would, 
after all, likely be impacted by the recessions of wealthier nations.
In December, the IMF, Asian Development Bank and World Bank each predicted ‘09 growth figures of just under 5 percent. They’re now, one by one, recanting and setting that number at about -.5.
The fallout, of course, started well before this announcement. For one, government officials have been pushing for changes in the Cambodian Labor Law that would allow short-term contracts to be endlessly renewed (currently employers are forced to fish or cut bait, essentially. There’s a cap which eventually forces them to provide workers with the attendant benefits and security of a contract employee.) The government claims the changes are mere semantics and a boon to investors, but it’s pretty evident that this could be a quick and dirty way to streamline a struggling industry.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, meanwhile, insists the numbers are altogether unimportant suggesting any job loss would be offset by a growth in agriculture. In this scenario, the laid off factory worker picks up and returns to the countryside to farm. Where Cambodia’s notoriously hard-to-obtain and expensive land titles fit in to this picture has yet to be addressed.
