FACTBOX - Key facts about Cambodia
FACTBOX - Key Facts About Cambodia
Sun Jul 27, 2008 (Reuters)
(Reuters) - Cambodians went to the polls on Sunday in a general election likely to hand another five years in power to Prime Minister Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP).
Following are some key facts about Cambodia:
GEOGRAPHY: The Southeast Asian country has an area of 181,035 square km (69,898 square miles), about 40 percent of which is forest. Neighbours are Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
CAPITAL: Phnom Penh
POPULATION: 14,241,640 (2008)
ETHNICITY: Khmers, descendants of the Angkor Empire, constitute 90 percent of the population. Vietnamese are 5 percent, Chinese 1 percent and others 4 percent.
RELIGION: Theravada Buddhism is the state religion and it is observed by 95 percent of the population. The rest practise Mahayana Buddhism, Islam and Christianity.
LANGUAGE: Khmer is the official language. Some English and French are spoken in the cities.
ECONOMY:
-- Cambodia's economy is based on agriculture, tourism and light industry, in particular garments made for export.
-- The International Monetary Fund forecasts economic growth of 7 percent for 2008.
-- Gross domestic product, by 2008 estimates, is $9.92 billion (4.98 billion pounds), and GDP per capita is $678.
-- Exports were worth $4.31 billion in 2007.
-- A U.N.-brokered peace pact in 1991 restored Sihanouk as a constitutional monarch. Elections in 1993, 1998 and 2003 led to coalition governments dominated by Hun Sen and the CPP.
Sources: Reuters; CIA World Factbook; IMF; World Bank.
(Writing by Jijo Jacob, editing by David Cutler)
-- Cambodia's annual inflation rate hit 18.7 percent in January.
* SOME HISTORY:
-- Cambodia emerged as a newly independent nation in 1953 under King Norodom Sihanouk, who was overthrown in a right-wing coup in 1970.
-- Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge guerrillas launched a bloody agrarian revolution in 1975. An estimated 1.7 million people died over the next four years in rural labour camps that became known as the "Killing Fields".
-- Vietnam invaded and installed a communist government in early 1979, only pulling out a decade later.Labels: Election