Cambodia to ask Japan to invest $800 million in skytrain

I love the Khmer people, but putting a sky train like the BTS in Thailand in Phnom Penh is like putting lipstick on a pig.

"Skytrain" isn't an English expression. Do you mean "elevated railway"?

@lucabrast: Do you mean elevated bullet train? does not matter, Japan will love to expand to SEAsia..

Thanks, Toshiko.

Didn't realise it was a bullet train.

A Skytrain was originally built in Vancouver. It was copied for Bangkok, built by international consortia. I guess he's asking the Japanese because he knows they're more likely to throw tons of public money at the project without a lot of potentially embarrassing transparency.

Otherwise he'd be enlisting consultants to determine the project's feasibility, and so on.

Hmmmm......  Agree with KWBO that Khmer people are largely warm and welcoming.  they deserve better than the crooks they have running the country.  Tens if not hundreds of billions of USD have been poured into Cambodia since the end of their troubles and yet the place remains underdeveloped and the people exploited.  and a small slice of the elite live high on the hog.  a Skytrain in Phnom Penh will just be another opportunity for the politicians to take a slice of the money.  foreign donors have been continually suckered thru a combination of guilt and greed.

not inadequate infra but sheer corruption has deterred investors.  although not donors who have given an absolute fortune to Cambodia over the last decades.  Poor Khmer suffer while to top 1% rob them and run the place like a feudal kingdom.

Japan's investors are choosy and they are not giving their money. Cambodia asked investment, not hand out. I am sure investors have own exert analysts.

Hun Sen heard Abe was throwing away money to other countries. So, why not?

Cambodia has been the only country that I've been to where the people are actually quite frightened to talk about the government and the future.

I wonder why?

Improving the current infrastructure will not help the system of corruption and nepotism that is in existence in Cambodia. Before Japan gives any aid to such a country, there should be a list of conditions which Cambodia has to fulfil before any money changes hands...,,

It is not aid. It is private investment. Beside that, corporations will love to have opportunity to create branches in SE Asia. In Japan, factories can't recruit workers.