On the morning of April 21, 2000 at 8: 30 the office of the Council of Ministers Convened a plenary Cabinet meeting presided over by Samdech Hun Sen Prime minister of the Royal Government of Cambodia in order to review and adopt the agendas as follows:

1. Review and adopt the documents for Consultative Group Meeting (CG) in Paris.
2. Others.

On the first agenda the Cabinet discussed and exchange views on the documents for the upcoming Consultative Group meeting be held in Paris. The contents of the documents indicate the royal government's position for the fourth CG meeting in Paris, organized by National Committee for Rehabilitation of Cambodian Development Council.

The Cabinet approved and added more views to the contents of the documents which mentioned the achievements of implementation of triangle strategies laid out by the head of the government and targets for the years ahead:

Angle 1: Ensuring peace, stability and security for the country and people.

Angle 2: Rapid integration of Cambodia into international Community and normalization.

Angle 3: Development of the country through implementing reform programs such as armed forces reform, fiscal reform, public administrative reform and judicial reform, and the implementation of firm measures aimed at eliminating illegal logging.

The documents also indicate the growth in economy, for instance the domestic products increased by 4.3 percent in 1999 after 1 percent drop in 1997-1998. The exchange rate is fairly stable around 3.800 riels per dollar and total foreign saving increased 8 percent similar to four months of exportation. Fiscal condition has got much improved and reached 112 percent of annual budget plan in which value added tax stood at 62 percent of total tax revenues in 1999.

While the growth in exportation of domestic products increased about 13.2 percent. The documents also underline that the most important and major goal of the present royal economic government is to focus on alleviating poverty encompassing the whole country. The far vision of the royal government in 20 to 30 years ahead is to develop the country to the standard of the development comparable to the neighboring developed countries in the region and all Cambodian people will enjoy a proper living condition with development, prosperity and happiness by striving to achieve high economic growth about 6 to 7 percent a year through the following strategies:

1. Strengthen peace, stability and social order.
2. Enhance and encourage investments.
3. Mobilise the country's resources.
4. Focus investment resources on priority fields and increase agricultural products.
5. Build up institutional capacity and ensure good governance.
6. Integrate national economy into regional and world economy.
7. Develop human resources.
8. Maintain and expand partnership with international donor community and civil society.

Others.

The head of the royal government assigned a task to the Ministry of Fine Arts in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy and Finance to repair Chatomouk Conference Hall ready for the upcoming meeting of Pacific Asian Parliaments.

The Cabinet meeting ended at 11:30AM.

Phnom Penh, 21 April 2000

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