People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

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orussey98
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by orussey98 »

pczz wrote: Fri Mar 20, 2020 8:58 am Cambodia is not the only country in self denial but it has the advantage that it is undeveloped and many people can go back to the village and live off the land, an option not available to most peopel in the west. Economic catasrophe is coming but in some ways undeveloped economies may have an advantage over more developed ones this time
Totally agree.

A lot of challenges are coming for Cambodia.
What happened lately : lost EBA ( totally in august), online gambling ban, real estate bubble, no tourist.

Will depend of China now because Cambodia is low maintenance cost for them.
If chinese economy is not so good in the months to come, Japan and Korea will try to gain more influence here.

We can expect many tourist actors to go bankrupt this year.
Even if the number of westerners is quite small compared to the number of chinese now, landlords will have big difficulties to find someone to rent. Especially now that online gambling is banned.
Real estate speculator are at stake too. Many people will stop to pay the instalment plan and/or the loans.

Be prepared to see the taxes increase which won't work to save the economy. Also the cops to ask money more often.
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by Jcml19 »

Im in the same camp 2-3 months..

The hysteria is mostly in the fact that its highly contagious and that there is no cure... E.g. a death rate of 1% and 100 million catches it thats a million dead...

CAMBODIA's enconomy should be in the crapper unless they get a capital injection from china. China is going to have a tough time with the other powers on the brink of collapse so pouring money into cambodia is possible... Then again what will the export to cam...

Im just curious if the disease will come back...
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WildA
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by WildA »

j57 wrote: Fri Mar 20, 2020 6:09 am My Khmer wife buys chicken feet, chicken wing TIPS, snakehead, fish heads and thinks she is on cloud 9..
I never watched someone eat rice 1 grain at a time slowly until I met her...She takes dresses she buys cheap and changes them into beautiful outfits.
She hand washes all laundry...cleans house like a pro.
I have slept many nights in Kampong Cham in her father's old tiny house where she grew up.
There are people all over the World who tighten their belts and get through tragedy every day.
The economy is wrecked and will come back.
You cannot just turn everything off for months and expect a smooth restart...it will take time.
I think the World will learn lessons.
It is very interesting that every country in the World is closing its borders.... something Trump has been called a racist and piece of shit for advocating the past 4+ years....
And he only wanted to stop illegal entries...not folks on vacation and business with passports, funds, visas, and tourist dollars to spend...
I said earlier, I did a recon of Siem Reap at 8:30pm last night and Khmer places were open...customers eating....My buddy chose to stay open ...but, business sucked as it has sucked for quite a while.
I live on the airport side of town and it is mellow and peaceful.
I think people fleeing to the Provinces could spread the virus to the elderly that live out away from PP.
The chinese kept saying when it warmed up in china they would be fine..
It has been 33-35C here in Siem Reap..
The clothes are exported ....not bought by Khmers..for the most part...
Italy..France..USA...UK..etc...yikes..
The summer clothes for the west need to be in stores soon...
There will be some tough times ahead..
But, The World will come back and prosper...
What a wonderful, mature and reasoned post! Kudos to you.
Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret. Horace
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they arent out to get you. Pynchon
offroadscholar
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by offroadscholar »

Duncan wrote: Fri Mar 20, 2020 11:19 am Maybe reducing the Riel to USA $ exchange rate may help . But turning the page, there are also advantages in making the Riel stronger.

Let's go through the possibilities of .


USA $1 = 3,500 r

or

USA $1 = 4,500 r
Worst case would be an Argentina style freezing of Bank accounts, and convert USD deposits to Riel at a new rate.
theKid
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by theKid »

Jcml19 wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 9:30 am Im in the same camp 2-3 months..

The hysteria is mostly in the fact that its highly contagious and that there is no cure... E.g. a death rate of 1% and 100 million catches it thats a million dead...

CAMBODIA's enconomy should be in the crapper unless they get a capital injection from china. China is going to have a tough time with the other powers on the brink of collapse so pouring money into cambodia is possible... Then again what will the export to cam...

Im just curious if the disease will come back...
An rather steep and painful recession is a given. How long is debatable. But the key thing is keeping people fed and avoiding a complete collapse of social order and the economy in that period. Here I see the biggest danger for countries like Cambodia. Just waiting for the first signs of trouble.
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Phnom Poon
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by Phnom Poon »

offroadscholar wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 10:09 am Worst case would be an Argentina style freezing of Bank accounts, and convert USD deposits to Riel at a new rate.
followed by all foreigners, now penniless, deported

.

monstra mihi bona!
andy1
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by andy1 »

The recent anouncements by the UK government which is tory(money grabbers) are utterly astounding 80 per cent of wages to closed businesses to be paid by them.The Governments around the world expext this to end in social breakdown and anarchy,and are trying to prevent such an outcome.These governments do NOT give away money unless they alredy know it is worthless money.$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ piss it down the pan while you can$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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xandreu
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by xandreu »

General Mackevili wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 9:02 am I'm in the 'things will be back to normal in a few months' camp, but I have been cursed with optimism my whole life. I might be wrong, but the fuck if I'd rather close down every world economy and stay home for a year rather than take a 1 in a 100 chance of dropping dead.

Would there really be one person left on the planet who smoked cigarettes if the thought of 8,000,000 people a year needlessly dying was just unthinkable? 500,000 people die from the regular old flu every year, yet life goes on and hardly anyone freaks out of thinks about it every day.

I'm not trying to minimize how bad COVID-19 is, because it's fucking horrible, but are people rationally as worried about it to the same level of statistics as other factors that can increase your mortality rate?

Let's say even 5 out of 100 die from catching COVID-19. By shutting down entire economies could mean no money for many families, and people buy food with money. 100% of people without food die, so I don't think it's as simple as 'holy shit, we have to do WHATEVER we can to stop Coronavirus!'

I have no doubt some of this will be taken out of context, I'm just pointing out that people are in a frenzy and thinking the most important thing in the entire universe right now is stopping the spread of Coronavirus at all costs, but we shouldn't neglect the importance of other factors of life as well.



Dr. Michael Morbius: How far are we allowed to go to fix something that’s broken?
Morbius’s Mentor: Until the remedy is worse than the disease.
I tend to agree. This is a total shock to the world and the world doesn't really know how to respond, despite being told for many years by the WHO that something like this was looming on the horizon.

Closing the world and shutting up shop might be a good thing to do for the short-term, but it can't last forever. At some point, people will realise that life has to go on, despite the virus. The alternative is to live in some sort of post-apocalyptic world where it's every man for himself. Let's not forget that as highly contagious as this is, the overwhelming majority of people do pull through and (assuming it doesn't mutate further) then become immune. Of course it will still kill many many people, and I don't mean to sound like I'm brushing that aside as if it doesn't matter. It does.

Whether things regain some sort of normality or not won't make the virus go away. It will be with us for a very long time, whether we keep the world closed or not. At some point, we will start to have people who have become immune to the virus due to having had it already, and I think everyone else will start to accept that they simply have to take their chances and start to open up shop again.

This will pass.
The difference between animals and humans is that animals would never allow the dumb ones to lead the pack.
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by daeum_tnaot »

I definitely think that most Cambodians will survive, as others have mentioned, many of them have access to land in the province, and this at least have a place to lay their head. Even food is not very expensive and most people just eat rice and some basic meat. Many families have sacks of rice sitting around in the province. Even if the government turns off electricity people are used to cooking with charcoal.

As for the economy, we'll see whether things calm down if some of the European countries start to flatten out in the number of cases reported. It wouldn't surprise me if Cambodia's economy did not come back relatively quickly due to dollarization, foreigners looking for a cheap place to live. A lot of it will also depend on if factories are shut in Thailand.
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Re: People in shock. Effects on Cambodian economy.

Post by daeum_tnaot »

Duncan wrote: Fri Mar 20, 2020 11:19 am Maybe reducing the Riel to USA $ exchange rate may help . But turning the page, there are also advantages in making the Riel stronger.

Let's go through the possibilities of .


USA $1 = 3,500 r

or

USA $1 = 4,500 r

I don't think this would make much difference. a high percentage of the economy is in USD and the riel is like a peripheral currency.

Devaluing the riel would cause a loss of confidence by civil servants and those with assets denominated in riel, which would just contribute to panic. Hopefully the government would realize this and hold steady.
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