With a consistent focus on growth and development, Cambodia has made remarkable progress and achieved lower-middle-income status. Over the last three decades, it has grown its economy by 7.5 per cent on average, reducing the rate of poverty from around 50 per cent to around 10 per cent of the population. But now, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to strain not only the national health system, but the entire economy.

Cambodia is a small country, and has extensive trading relations with other South-East Asian economies such as Thailand and Viet Nam as well as supply chains that are deeply integrated with China. Although the health toll of the pandemic has been low, with under 150 confirmed cases as of this writing, the Government is on high alert and is wary of a late spike.  Stricter social distancing measures are progressively being implemented. On the economic front, the Government could allocate up to US$2 billion to address the fallout – but the economic toll of the pandemic is already visible.