Unconvincing Salesman Par Excellence

[Alternatives Watch]

Alternatives Watch – 30viii09


UNCONVINCING SALESMAN PAR EXCELLENCE


Council for Development of Cambodia secretary-general Sok Chenda may
find it most difficult to attract foreign investments. He is
confident, enthusiastic, and optimistic, which are necessary
attributes for the task. However, he may need to be more. Reporter
Roger Mitten, who conducted and published an insight interview with
Sok Chenda, concludes he is only half convinced after encountering the
man he dubs the salesman par excellence.

There are reasons why the salesman par excellence is not fully
convincing. He claims all businessmen are interested only in profit,
“not physical incentives, the political regime, not even religion –
Ramadan or not, they don’t care”. His best selling point is simply
that there is money to be made in Cambodia. He says there are fiscal
incentives, total foreign ownership, and many untouched sectors to
choose, offering “unique” opportunity foreign investors cannot find
elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the sale pitch is only half truth. Globalised Cambodia,
of which Sok Chenda is proud, also means investors do have access to
other truth the salesman par excellence would prefer buried. Many long
term investors – the type that Sok Chenda claims like growing up with
the host country – take into account in their investment decisions
those Sok Chenda dismisses as irrelevant, plus much more.

One of them is the high cost of doing business in Cambodia, which Sok
Chenda acknowledges in particular for electricity, telecommunication,
and transportation sectors. The government’s effort to reduce the
electricity costs by buying it from Vietnam is commercially sensible
at least in the short run, but this will not address a structural
defect that keeps the cost high – corruption.

Sok Chenda shows the least concern about the impact of corruption. He
maintains as long as there is a profit at the end businessmen do not
mind making some payment they “should not really have to make”. He
does not seem to realise these unnecessary payments push the business
cost up, requiring the businessmen to pass them onto consumers in the
form of higher prices to retain their profit. This in turn keeps away
other businessmen whom Sok Chenda tries to entice. It is a vicious
cycle that could be broken only by bringing corruption under control.

However, the corruption is likely to persist, if not prospering. Sok
Chenda trivialises corruption by claiming the number one in
transparency Singapore still has “people who are corrupt and who cheat
the tax department”. He fails to distinguish between corruption and
impunity for corruption when asserting, “Singapore has policemen and
jails for a reason [corruption]”. It would be hard pressed for him to
come up with any case where a Cambodian high profile official is
convicted and jailed for corruption. Incidentally, Sok Chenda – he
says he ends the interview so that he can pick up his daughter at the
British School – may have difficulty in justifying the school fee with
his official meagre income.

Thus, the salesman par excellence appears to be an optimist who would
say, “See, I am not injured yet” while falling from Eiffel Tower.


Ung Bun Ang


Quotable Quote:

“The latest definition of an optimist is one who fills up his
crossword puzzle in ink.”

Clement King Shorter (1857–1926), British journalist and literary
critic.
Observer.