Notably, the poverty rate has seen a significant decline from 48% to 19% of the population, as reported by the Asian Development Bank's Country Partnership Strategy for 2014 to 2018.
The planned removal of restrictions on the cross-border movement of people and services is expected to spur cooperation in science and technology.
It was officially launched by the Ministry of Planning in December 2014, as the culmination of a two-year process supported by the Korea International Cooperation Agency.
[3] Although science and technology are clearly identified as a cross-cutting strategy for promoting innovation for development, it will be important to co-ordinate and monitor the implementation of priority activities and assess the outcome.
The key challenge here will be to build a sufficient human resource base in science and engineering to support the ‘rectangular’ targets.
[1] The large foreign firms in Cambodia that are the main source of value-added exports tend to specialize in electrical machinery and telecommunications.
[1][4] There is little evidence that the Law on Patents, Utility Model Certificates and Industrial Designs (2006) has been of practical use, thus far, to any but the larger foreign firms operating in Cambodia.
Nevertheless, the law has no doubt encouraged foreign firms to introduce technological improvements to their on-shore production systems, which can only be beneficial.
Despite this, Cambodia still ranked lowest in the region for the education dimension of the World Bank's Knowledge Economy Index.
[1] The country's narrow economic and scientific base offers some opportunity for growth tied to food production.
However, the diffused responsibility for science and technology across 11 key ministries presents challenges for effective policy development and governance.
[1] The number of scientific publications authored by Cambodian scientists and catalogued in international journals grew by 17% on average between 2005 and 2014, a rate surpassed only by Malaysia, Singapore and Viet Nam.
Of note is that Cambodians count both Asian (Thai and Japanese) and Western scientists (Americans, Britons and French) among their closest collaborators.