Cambodia

Cambodia: strong, sustained growth, 1980–2025

Garment and footwear manufacturing exports, alongside tourism (notably Angkor Wat) and construction, drove one of Southeast Asia's fastest growth rates in the 2000s and 2010s from a low post-Khmer-Rouge base. Between 1980 and 2025, Cambodia's GDP per capita grew from $143 to $2,872 (current US$), a compound annual growth rate of 6.9% — strong, sustained growth. Annual GDP growth averaged 5.6% with a year-to-year standard deviation of 7.4 points, reflecting considerable volatility and periodic crises. Structurally, agriculture's share of the economy moved from 45.3% to 16.1% of GDP (a classic decline as the economy industrialized/modernized), while services rose from 39.4% to 35.0% of GDP, a comparatively unusual pattern for this period. On human development, life expectancy rose from 47.5 to 70.8 years, while tertiary school enrollment moved from 0.1% to 21.4%, while the urban population share grew from 12.7% to 41.1%.

What this growth cost: Growth was not without cost: per-capita CO2 emissions rose from 0.06 to 1.10 tonnes CO2e per person.