Economy of Cambodia

On this page

1. Growth
2. Farming and fishing
3. Garments and manufacturing
4. Tourism
5. Currency
6. See also
7. References

On this page

1. Growth
2. Farming and fishing
3. Garments and manufacturing
4. Tourism
5. Currency
6. See also
7. References

A farmer spraying a rice field in Cambodia

The economy of Cambodia rests on factory exports, tourism, construction and rice farming, and it uses the US dollar beside the riel.

Growth

The World Bank counts Cambodia among the fastest-growing economies in the world in the twenty years before the COVID-19 pandemic. Real growth averaged 8.2 percent a year from 2000 to 2019, led by tourism, manufacturing for export, real estate and construction, and the country reached lower-middle-income status in 2015. Output shrank by 3.6 percent in 2020 and growth returned to 6.0 percent in 2024. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) put growth at 5.3 percent in 2025, held back by weak home demand during a long slump in real estate, and projected 3.0 percent for 2026. The World Bank projects 3.5 percent for 2026.

The government has set a goal of high-income status by 2050, and Cambodia is preparing to leave the United Nations list of Least Developed Countries. The World Bank writes that this calls for a shift away from growth based on low costs and trade preferences toward work with higher value added and better jobs.

Farming and fishing

Farming employs a smaller share of Cambodians than in the past. Open Development Cambodia cites a study by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, released in 2017, that put the share of the population working in farming at about 40 percent, against about 80 percent in 1993. Agriculture made up about 22 percent of the economy in 2018.

Rice is the main crop, about half of farm output, grown on some 3.3 million hectares. Most farms are small and rain-fed: 58 percent grow rice alone, and more than 60 percent of farmers work less than 1.6 hectares. Rice production reached 10.8 million tonnes in 2018, and China was the largest buyer of milled rice that year. Corn, sugarcane, cashew nuts, cassava and rubber have spread since the late 2000s. Fish supply an estimated 80 percent of the animal protein in the usual Cambodian diet.

Garments and manufacturing

The garment, travel goods and footwear industry is the largest source of formal jobs. The World Bank counted more than one million workers in it in 2025, and more than 75 percent of them were women. Foreign direct investment rose to US$5.1 billion that year, about a tenth of the economy, and has spread from garments into electronics and renewable energy.

Tourism

Tourism is one of the main pillars of the economy. In 2019 Cambodia had about 6.61 million international visitors and 11.3 million domestic trips, and the largest group of foreign visitors that year came from China. Receipts from foreign visitors rose from US$228 million in 2000 to about US$4.9 billion in 2019, and the industry directly employed some 630,000 people that year, 60 percent of them women. Numbers fell steeply in 2020 with the pandemic. The main destination is the Angkor Archaeological Park near Siem Reap. The World Bank found that revenue from the park fell by 27.4 percent in the first eight months of 2026, compared with a year earlier.

Currency

The national currency is the riel, but the US dollar is widely used. Under the Khmer Rouge, from 1975 to 1979, money and private trade were banned, and Cambodia had no money at all until the riel was reintroduced in 1980. Nombulelo Duma, in a working paper for the International Monetary Fund, wrote that the experience contributed to the new riel's low acceptance by the public, and that they kept savings in dollars, gold or rice instead.

In 2011 Duma described Cambodia as the most dollarized economy in Asia, with dollars brought in by garment exports, tourism, foreign investment and aid. The paper found that the cities ran mostly on dollars and the countryside mostly on riel. The IMF has advised keeping the exchange rate between the riel and the dollar broadly stable as the main anchor for prices, while building up the use of the riel step by step.

See also

• Cambodia