On the morning of October 26, 2026, the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Administration and the National Institute of Statistics under the Ministry of Planning jointly held a ceremony to release the province’s preliminary gross domestic product (GDP) results. The ceremony was co-chaired by Rin Virak, personal adviser to Prime Minister Hun Manet, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Planning and Chairman of the NIS Board of Directors, and Preah Sihanouk Governor Mang Sineth.
Rin Virak stressed that compiling subnational macroeconomic statistics, including GDP, inflation, government revenue and expenditure, and investment, has been a key task since 2018 for economic management and price stability.
For the 2025 GDP results, the NIS changed the base year for provincial national accounts from 2011 to 2014, in line with national accounts. This revision increased the measured size and coverage of the economy and GDP per capita compared with the previous calculation.
The Department of National Accounts Statistics chose the production approach because sufficient supporting data for the expenditure and income approaches were not yet available at provincial level.
Mang Sineth welcomed and highly valued the results. He said the provincial administration had long wanted GDP results to understand the actual size of the economy and use the information to formulate policies and attract investors.
Preah Sihanouk covers 2,658.90 square kilometres and has a total population of 245,569, with an economically active labour force proportion of 91.54%. Known as the “rising star in the southwest”, the province has international land, sea and air gateways.
Despite challenges such as insufficient production data directly from enterprises and limited statistical human resources, both sides called on provincial departments and units and the private sector to continue cooperating and providing accurate data regularly each year, ensuring high-quality, accurate statistics for the common benefit. Article: Pai Sokhim. Photos: Lay Chanda.
