Interview: Cambodia sees steady progress in transportation infrastructure development: officials

Cambodia has seen steady progress in the development of transportation infrastructure thanks to financial support from friendly countries and private investments, officials said Friday.

Nou Vattanak, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, said Cambodia has 10,907 km of national roads and 4,407 km of provincial roads.

"So far, 5,982 km, or 39 percent of the roads have been paved with tar," he told Xinhua in a telephone interview, projecting that all the national and provincial roads will be paved with tar by 2031 because the country builds about 570 km of roads a year.

He said the challenge for the country in road development is the "budget", saying that currently, friendly countries, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan, have provided huge amount of loans and grants to Cambodia for road construction.

Sharing his opinion about the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, he said, "Cambodia needs much more money to invest in infrastructure development, so the upcoming bank will provide a new source of capital for Cambodia as well as other developing countries in Asia."

Khek Norinda, director of the communications and public relations department of the Cambodia Airports, said Cambodia has three international airports, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap International Airports, which are each capable to handle 2.5 million passengers per year, while Preah Sihanouk International Airport is capable of accommodating 700,000 travelers per year.

To cope with the steady increase of passengers, Cambodia Airports launched in January last year a 100-million U.S. dollars upgrading program to expand the terminals at Phnom Penh and Siem Reap International Airports to double their capacity.

"Both airports' passenger terminals are being expanded to accommodate 5 million passengers each, a doubling of their current capacity. Full completion of the work is scheduled for within the first quarter of 2016," he told Xinhua by email.

"The existing work could be able to address passenger growth until 2025, so any further terminal extensions can indeed be expected after that date," he said, adding that for Preah Sihanouk International Airport, some refurbishment work is planned although the current facilities can cope with the present level of passenger traffic.

So Sieng, director of the planning and statistics department of the state-owned Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, said the kingdom's largest shipping facility has been constructing a multi-purpose terminal to serve trade and tourism, as well as to facilitate oil and gas exploration and exploitation activities on the seabed.

"The construction of the multi-purpose terminal, with a water depth of 13.5 meters, began in January this year and is expected to be completed in May 2017," he told Xinhua over the telephone, adding that the project is estimated to cost 80 million U.S. dollars, the source of which is a concessional loan from Japan.

According to the official, currently, the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port covers a land area of nearly 125 hectares and the port's water depth is 10.5 meters and so can receive ships weighing more than 10,000 tons.

The port can handle about 5 million tons of goods per year, he said, adding that last year, it received 333,904 twenty-foot- equivalent units, or TEUs (standard-sized containers), up 16 percent year-on-year.

"The average growth of container throughput is 15 percent per year. With this steady growth, the port will receive up to 730,000 TEUs in 2020," he said.

Comparing the port with other ports in neighboring countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, he said capacity and service quality are comparable, but the port's size is smaller than those in the neighboring countries because of the differences in the size of the countries' economies. Endi