This report focuses on areas withhighest potential efficiency gains to increase the value formoney from investments in core public goods and servicessuch as extension, irrigation and rural roads. This is afirst attempt to carry out such an analysis in Cambodia, andeven in the Greater Mekong sub-region. Based on extensivedata gathering and surveys, this chapter analyzes theefficiency and effectiveness of agricultural sectorexpenditures in Cambodia and assesses various options forincreasing the impact of government expenditures onagricultural growth. Other challenges include an excessivefocus on rehabilitating primary irrigation infrastructureand a neglect of secondary and tertiary systems, a lack ofmaintenance of irrigation and rural roads, and the slow paceof developing or adopting new technologies to reduce futuremaintenance costs. There is also a need to better prioritizeagricultural and related infrastructure expenditures, bothby type and by geographic location, to maximize their impacton growth. The rest of the report is organized as follows.Chapter two presents recent developments in the agriculturesector of Cambodia. Chapter three gives an overview ofsectoral expenditure trends over the last decade. The budgetprocess and its relationship to sectoral developmentstrategies is discussed in chapter three. Chapter fourdiscusses the novel contribution of the AgPER in analyzingthe efficiency and effectiveness of government spendingusing benefit-cost analysis to examine select publicinvestments. Chapter five discusses how likely climatechange trends may affect future agriculture expenditures andsuggests some priority areas for public spending. Theconclusion section summarizes the major findings and policyrecommendations of the report.
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