Thursday, October 20, 2016

Is the Riel in Cambodia on the rise?

The Phnom Penh Post recently had an article based in a Bank of Cambodia survey about the usage of riel, and no surprise the outcome was that Khmer people like the riel a lot. The study was done and financed by JICA, a Japanese kind of USAID or GIZ.

So here is the problem with it: The study asked for wages and salaries, loans and business revenues. No surprise salaries all over the country are in riel, except Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. In general "Dollarisation remains high, at about 80 percent." 
The remaining 20 percent is used by locals for every day expenses. Most veggies fruit and grocery items are less than 5 dollar and can easily be paid in riel. everything that is more durable and expensive will be paid in dollar.
I cannot see any thing new in this fact and why it needed 200 households and 800 businesses to get a conclusion you can have by simply going to the market. Oh, maybe it is just to have a new piece of propaganda and a justification for the Japanese tax spending for JICA.