Mentor of a generation

Mentor of a generation

 

China Daily Asia | 7 March 2014

In Khmer, or Cambodian, the term “lok kru” translates to “village teacher”. Similar to the Mandarin word “shifu”, it refers to one who passes knowledge to the next generation and provides guidance.

Sok Siphana is proud to be known as “lok kru” at home in his native Cambodia. “I find that title very heartwarming,” he says. “Being a mentor of the young generation is like seeing the bamboo shoots grow.”

A man of many roles, Sok is currently chairman of the Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI), a senior adviser to the government, a practicing lawyer heading his own firm, and even a host of a popular TV policy talk show.

After spending six years as Cambodia’s vice minister of commerce, until 2005, Sok says he has found new balance in his life. Being the chairman of Cambodia’s most prestigious think tank allows him to be independent, but also influential.

CDRI is one of the oldest and most-respected economic think tanks in the country. It covers topics related to development such as natural resources, industrial integration and many other social issues.

“Once a year we have an outlook conference. We talk about where Cambodia is heading, how we should cope with it, what development challenges we have and how we can be faster,” Sok says.

A member country of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Cambodia is one of the fastest-growing economies in the region. Its GDP has grown at around 7 percent for almost two decades.

When Cambodia entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2004, Sok, in his governmental role, and his team were at the helm to handle the country’s accession negotiations. Since then, foreign direct investment (FDI) has more than doubled.

Sok notes that trade in Cambodia has grown from $1 billion to $6 billion since entering the WTO, while the country’s poverty ratio dropped from 50 percent to less than 20 percent over the same time frame.

“The WTO is a game changer for the whole country,” he says. “It brought Cambodia from 17 years of economic embargo into the community of trading nations. It opens up a new liberalized approach to welcome FDI.”

Foreign investors are confident that the government’s policies on economic liberalization will not be reversed in the future, he says.

“Cambodia is very pro-foreign investment,” Sok notes, recalling that his priority as vice minister of commerce was not just to enter the WTO but to establish good commercial laws of international standards, which now include arbitration law, company law and intellectual property laws.

A national commercial arbitration court is still being constituted, but he says foreign investors have other options to solve disputes, such as international arbitration which is enforceable in Cambodia.

The WTO has brought a new sense of economic freedom, he adds, and starting a business in Cambodia has now become easier than in neighboring countries.

According to CDRI’s projection, in two to three years Cambodia will graduate from being a lower-middle-income country to becoming a middle-income country.

“An opened-up economy transfers the know-how, knowledge, capital and access to information. That’s probably what changed Cambodia,” he says.

The third of six children, Sok spent his adolescent years under Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, before fleeing to the United States as a refugee in 1980.

“My country went through such a difficult time. I’m a refugee. I know how hard it was. I lived through the Killing Fields,” he says.

He believes his experiences of poverty, hunger and ignorance instilled his goal to make changes back home.

“That’s where my passion comes from. I don’t want people to go through that.”

Sok studied hard in the US, working his way up to receiving a doctoral degree in law.

Between 1993 and 1999, he worked as a legal adviser for the United Nations Development Programme in Geneva, Switzerland.

Deciding to return to Cambodia, he joined the government as vice minister of commerce in 1999, before taking up the role as director of the Division of Technical Cooperation Coordination with the International Trade Centre in 2005, a part of the WTO.

In 2009, he was appointed by Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen as adviser to the government and to the Council for the Development of Cambodia with ministerial rank.

“My knowledge is more useful back home than in Geneva. It’s more useful in Cambodia than in a big country where a million people are as well educated as me.”

Sok expects the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015 will open up fresh opportunities for the country to become an economic gateway for ASEAN.

“The AEC will be a watershed game changer for Cambodia,” he says. “As we move to the AEC we will be a gateway into ASEAN, at least in the greater Mekong sub-region.”

With international logistics companies increasing their investments in Cambodia, Sok notes that the establishment of a big logistics park will connect ports in the south of the country to big cities in countries including Thailand and Vietnam.

He notes that a recent survey of 10 ASEAN countries showed that Cambodia is the third-most prepared country for the AEC, after Singapore and Malaysia.

“Another survey also shows that Cambodia is more English-literate than Vietnam and Thailand,” Sok says, adding that incoming companies will have not have a problem hiring efficient workers.

Strengthening workers’ capacity is one of the priorities of Cambodia’s National Strategic Development Plan (2014-18), with vocational schools, primary schools and universities striving to meet investors’ needs.