カンボジアのドル化の全体像―ドル化に一体化した金融発展

抄録

As the world economy becomes increasingly globalized, dollarization, that is, the replacement of all or some functions of domestic currency by foreign currency, is indeed prevalent. This study discusses the major issues of dollarization in Cambodia, the most dollarized economy in Asia, where the degree of financial dollarization has reached more than 95% as of the late 2010s.

The dollarization of the Cambodian economy has several distinguishing characteristics. First, financial and real dollarization have developed a mutually promoting relationship. Second, network externality of currency has played a crucial role in the persistent progress of dollarization under rapid financial development. Third, the dollarization is of a domestically driven nature, as bank credits in dollars are financed only by domestic deposits in dollars.

While dollarization has had several merits in the development of the real and financial sectors of the Cambodian economy, it is uncertain if a highly dollarized economy is sustainable in the future. In addition to the recognized cost of dollarization, such as a lack of the last resort function of central banks, lack of independent monetary policies, and loss of seigniorage, there is concern that sufficient dollar fund amounts will not be available to sustain economic growth. Therefore, it is important to expand the use of the Khmer Riel as the unit of account, means of payment, and store of value to circumvent financial growth constraints.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the historical development of Cambodian dollarization. Section 3 introduces the realization of dollarization as revealed by the NBC-JICA joint nationwide survey on expanding the use of the Khmer Riel, also noting that the dollarization of Cambodia is not a surface phenomenon but rather financial development combined with dollarization, which has never been observed in the economic development of East and Southeast Asian countries. Section 4 discusses the background of Cambodian dollarization and the prospect of economic development based on the dollarized financial system. Section 5 describes the evolutionary process of dollarization from political perspectives, focusing on the changing political platform of the Cambodian People’s Party. Section 6 introduces the recent development of de-dollarization policies, based on the understanding that the successful repression of dollarization needs policy instruments that effectively suppress the network externality of dollar-based financial development.