PHNOM PENH :-- The Cambodian government aims to nearly double health and education spending by 2018, according to a guiding policy document officially launched by Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday.
The National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) 2014-2018 projects that the health budget will rise from about $261 million this year to $450 million in 2018.
This translates to a proportional jump in health funding from 13 per cent to 15 per cent of total budget expenditure for the “selected ministries and agencies” for which estimates are provided.
Education Ministry funding, meanwhile, is slated to rise from $327 million this year to $584 million in 2018.
Education spending would increase from 16 per cent of the total budget today to 20 per cent in four years’ time.
The opposition party and civil society groups have for years been calling for a greater proportion of the budget to be spent on health and education, and less on defence and security.
The NSDP projects that while defence and security spending (which includes military and police) will still rise in dollar terms over the period, by 2018, proportional spending will drop from 21.5 per cent to 19.4 per cent.
Opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party spokesman YimSovann declined to comment in detail yesterday, saying he had not seen the spending plan.
But he said that while past budget laws had been “very good” in terms of allocations to health and education, the actual distribution of funds had often not matched up, implying that corruption was an obvious concern.
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