What’s emerging now looks more like a state-led attempt to build the “rails” of development—physical and digital—so that the next cycle of growth is not only faster, but more controllable and more sophisticated.
What’s emerging now looks more like a state-led attempt to build the “rails” of development—physical and digital—so that the next cycle of growth is not only faster, but more controllable and more sophisticated.
By Mehmet Enes Beşer
This is a new era in Cambodia’s development trajectory in which the key signs are no longer factories and garments but rather big systems—big systems in which money flows and big systems in which the world connects to Cambodia. The inauguration of Techo International Airport and the consolidation of the Bakong payment system indicate that Cambodia has become more confident in its planning, financing, and governance of infrastructure at scale and has become willing to put the state at the heart of infrastructure systems.
This is a meaningful shift. For years, Cambodia’s growth story was framed as a private-sector export miracle underwritten by foreign capital, with the state playing facilitator more than designer. That model delivered real gains, but it also produced familiar vulnerabilities: dependence on external demand, narrow industrial upgrading, and a political economy that sometimes treated institutions as afterthoughts. What’s emerging now looks more like a state-led attempt to build the “rails” of development—physical and digital—so that the next cycle of growth is not only faster, but more controllable and more sophisticated.
Airports are the classic symbol of national ambition. They’re expensive, high-visibility, and politically irresistible: a runway you can photograph, a terminal you can inaugurate, a skyline-adjacent monument to the idea of modernity. But airports are not simply transport projects. They are state capacity projects. They force governments to coordinate land, finance, logistics, security, migration, public health, regulation, and long-term planning. When done well, they change the country’s economic geography—pulling in tourism, business travel, cargo handling, aviation services, and surrounding investment. When done badly, they become a debt-heavy prestige asset that underperforms and crowds out smarter spending.
The real question, then, is not whether Cambodia can build an airport. It’s whether Cambodia can run an airport ecosystem: predictable rules, professional governance, safe operations, reliable connections, and the kind of investor confidence that makes airlines, logistics companies, and service industries bet on the country for the long haul. That is where “state-led” development either becomes a source of resilience or a source of fragility. A state can build quickly; it takes institutions to operate well.
Bakong, by contrast, is less photogenic—and that may be its advantage. Digital payment systems do not have ribbon-cutting events in the same sense, but the impact of a well-designed national payment system can be profound in the lives of individuals in ways that a megaproject can only dream of achieving. A well-designed national payment system can ease the lives of small businesses, reduce transaction costs, facilitate tax collection, make social programs cleaner, and move the economy into the “formal economy.” It can also lay the groundwork for innovation in the form of fintech services, credit for underserved entrepreneurs, cheaper remittance services, and improved commerce efficiency.
This, too, is risky. When the digital payment rails become the infrastructure of the country, the risk increases. The promise of this infrastructure is inclusion and efficiency. The risk is that the infrastructure will be technologically advanced but institutionally shallow—liable to outages, misuse, or public mistrust. “If people do not trust the rails, they will not use the rails. And if people do not trust the government or the infrastructure with respect to enforcement or data, they will find ways to circumvent the system.”
Put the airport and Bakong together and a clear pattern appears: Cambodia is trying to move from a development model that leans heavily on external engines to one that builds internal capability—state capability—to shape the next stage of growth. The state is becoming not only a regulator, but a direct participant: planner, financier, platform-builder, rule-maker, and sometimes market actor.
That can be good. In a world of volatile supply chains, rising protectionism, and more competitive industrial policy, countries that lack strong institutions often get stuck in low-value roles. A more capable Cambodian state could, in theory, do what many developing states struggle to do: convert growth into upgrading—better skills, better productivity, better governance, and a more diverse economic base.
But the phrase “in theory” is doing heavy lifting.
Cambodia will continue to depend on foreign capital. That is not a criticism; it’s a reality of scale. Capital inflows can accelerate development dramatically. The question is whether Cambodia can shift from dependence as vulnerability to dependence as leverage—using foreign capital to build domestic systems that endure, rather than building projects that require constant external rescue.
And that is where the quality of institutions enters as a key driver. The next stage will be determined by less glamorous factors: transparent procurement practices, predictable regulation, reliable auditing, and professional public management. Significant infrastructure investments and national digital platforms with decision-making processes that are obscure, a lack of clear accountability, and a lack of public scrutiny will ultimately create a backlash, both domestically and internationally. Investors can deal with uncertainty; they can’t deal with uncertainty disguised as certainty. Transparency is not merely a moral virtue here
Transparency is not merely a moral virtue here. It is economic infrastructure. It determines borrowing costs, investor confidence, and public buy-in. The more state-led Cambodia becomes, the more it must treat transparency as a stabilizer—because the state will increasingly be blamed for outcomes, not just for the rules. When a payments system glitches, citizens won’t blame “the market.” When an airport underperforms, they won’t blame “global conditions.” They will blame the institutions that planned it.
There is also a strategic dimension: sovereignty. As Cambodia builds larger state-led systems, it will face pressure to define how foreign partners plug into them. Airports involve global standards, foreign operators, and international security coordination. In digital payments, there is a need for cross-border interoperability, correspondent banking, and the geopolitics of financial data. The difficulty facing Cambodia is how to develop openness without sacrificing control, and how to develop control without stifling openness.
This is a maturity issue in policymaking: how to make clear and consistent rules, how to be willing to let institutions, rather than individuals, be in charge, and how to tell a story that is more than just speed. The danger in state-led development is always the same: where there is uneven capacity in the state, there is a danger that projects will outstrip the ability to govern them. The outcome is beautiful terminals and weak software.
So what should Cambodia aim for at this moment?
It should treat Techo International Airport not as the destination, but as a discipline. Building the surrounding ecosystem: training, service standards, logistics, tourism planning that spreads the benefits, land governance that reduces speculation and conflict, and operational transparency that builds trust. An airport is only as successful as the network it unlocks. And it should treat Bakong not as tech trophy, but public infrastructure that needs to earn legitimacy.
And it should treat Bakong not as a tech trophy, but as public infrastructure that must earn legitimacy. That means robust consumer protection, clear dispute resolution, strong cybersecurity, and rules that prevent the payment rails from becoming a bottleneck controlled by narrow interests. The more central the system becomes, the more it must be boringly reliable.
If Cambodia can do those two things—operate big systems well and govern them transparently—then the country’s state-led shift could become a genuine upgrade in its development model. Not the kind of upgrade measured only in GDP, but the kind measured in resilience: the ability to withstand shocks, to adapt policy without panic, to diversify opportunities, and to keep citizens invested in the direction of change.
2026 and the years around it will be critical because Cambodia is moving from a phase where growth could be powered by external tailwinds to a phase where growth will increasingly depend on internal competence. The runway is being built. The digital rails are being laid. The real test is whether Cambodia can build the institutions that make them carry the weight of a more sophisticated economy—and whether the state can prove that “more involved” also means “more accountable.”
If it can, Cambodia won’t just be building projects. It will be building a smarter state.