Cambodia In ASEAN:Achievements And Challenges

Cambodia has been striving and put much effort in the name of ASEAN member country since it became the10th member in April1999after many years of preparation and negotiation. When talking about ASEAN, there have been questions on advantages and expenditure of ASEAN integration. Besides, public opinion wants to know whether Cambodia really benefited from the organization, and if there is such benefit, they want us to list all the benefits. But it is not easy to do so. Actually, there are both obvious and unobvious advantages. The first main advantages are dealing with economic, social and cultural areas. Through joint endeavors in the spirit of equality and partnership in order to strengthen the foundation for a prosperous and peaceful community of the region, Cambodia aims at accelerating its economic growth, social progress and cultural development across the whole region. The economic growth, social progress and cultural development will drive Cambodia to be a real ASEAN member with full cooperation in all main sectors rather than focusing on economy alone. To accelerate this aim, Cambodia is planning to establish what is called "ASEAN Community member duty" which consists of ASEAN Political-Security Community, ASEAN Economic Community and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community not later than the year2020. Besides economic growth, social progress and cultural development, peace and stability in the whole region are also the main benefit, which Cambodia wants to gain the most. Follow the spirit of ASEAN; we all aim at promoting peace and stability though abiding respect for justice and the rule of law in relationship between member countries and adherent to the principles of UN Charter. As mentioned previously, one of the ASEAN community components is "Political-Security Community", so this will enhance the purpose of promoting peace and security in the region. Moreover, Cambodia also aims at promoting active collaboration and mutual assistance on matter of common interest in economic, social, technical, scientific and administrative spheres. Also, Being an ASEAN member Cambodia also wants member countries mutually provide assistance to each other in the form training and research facility for the above fields. Cooperation with existing international and regional organizations with similar aims and purposes is worth to be done. For the sake of more effective utilization of their agriculture and industries, the expansion of their trade including the study of the problems of international commodity trade, the improvement of their transportation and communications facilities and the raising of the living standards of their peoples need to be done collaboratively between and among all member countries.The purpose of this research aims to examine the progress and benefit of Cambodia being in ASEAN community for5years; to explore the Cambodia’s benefits and difficulties from regional economic integration with ASEAN; to analyze the impacts of regional economic integration, namely AFTA on the Cambodia’s government revenue, external trade, and flow of FDI, competitiveness in Intra-ASEAN, labor immigration, and diffusion of foreign capital by employing simply descriptive approach.