Business standard New Delhi, September 14, 2006
| A mix of culture, entertainment and improved infrastructure has put the country back on the tourist map. |
| More than 1.4 million tourists visited Cambodia last year and at least 1.1 million of them visited Angkor, despite the bad roads. The government expects total annual arrivals to reach 1.9 million this year, and 3 million by 2010. For a country whose tourism, practically speaking, is no more than six years old — three, to be more precise — this is a remarkable achievement and should leave one in no doubt that Cambodia is finally on its way. |
| The SARS outbreak in 2003 was the latest in a series of calamities that ravaged the country and its tourism for nearly three long decades. This was the period of death and trauma under the notorious Khmer Rouge, of war and occupation by Vietnam, of years of UN peacekeeping when safety was still fragile and land mines kept popping all over the place to kill and maim. Some 465,000 tourists still braved the odds to visit in 2000 and things were just beginning to look up when SARS injected a fresh bout of scare. |
Now that’s almost forgotten. Peace and stability have returned and are holding, the mines have been largely removed, Vietnam is now a trusted neighbour, relations with Thailand are back to normal, the nations of the Greater Mekong Sub-Region are in an extraordinarily cooperative mood, foreign investments are creeping in, and the government seems at last to have got its priorities right. Since improving the physical infrastructure is a must for any effort to improve the economy — and tourism — Prime Minister Hun Sen has committed his administration to building better roads and airports, expanding communications facilities, generating more electricity, and developing urban areas. |
