Cambodia approved 309 investment projects worth $5.22 billion in the first seven months of this year, Xinhua reported on 14 August, citing a press release from the Council for the Development of Cambodia, the state body that registers investment projects. Khmer Times carried the same figures the following day, with no baseline of any kind. The seven-month total the council published a year earlier was 440 projects worth $6.7 billion.
Set side by side, the two pairs give a fall of 29.8% in the number of projects and 22.1% in capital. They do not count the same thing, and the effect runs one way: the 2026 figure counts a channel the 2025 figure did not, which makes it larger and the fall shallower.
Cambodia registers investment through two bodies. Article 9 of the Law on Investment of October 2021 delegates the review and approval of private investment to municipal-provincial administrations through investment sub-committees, and leaves their rights, authorities and the size of investments they handle to a separate sub-decree. The council’s Cambodian Investment Board registers the larger projects and the sub-committees the smaller ones. The advisory firm VDB Loi puts the dividing line at US$5 million. The ten sub-committee projects registered in July 2026 carried about $31 million between them.
Through 2025 the council reported the two channels apart. Its own item on July 2025 is headed, in Khmer, that 67 projects worth about $944 million were registered by the Cambodian Investment Board of the Council for the Development of Cambodia. Reporting the same release, Khmer Times noted that the board had by then registered 26 more projects than in the whole of 2024. On 5 January the national news agency AKP published the council’s figures for 2025: 630 projects worth nearly $10 billion approved by the Cambodian Investment Board, up 52% on projects and 45% on capital. The sub-committees came in a sentence of their own. “In addition, 228 industrial projects approved by capital-provincial investment sub-committees attracted about US$763 million and are expected to create approximately 106,000 jobs.”
On 11 March AKP published February’s figures as a single total: 42 projects, about $166 million, of which 18 came from the council and 24 from the sub-committees. The council’s Khmer headline for July 2026 says the projects were registered in the Kingdom of Cambodia, where a year earlier it said registered by the Cambodian Investment Board.
The components remain inside the releases. The council’s statement of 14 July, reported by the Phnom Penh Post, put the first half at 276 projects worth about $4.7 billion: 181 registered directly by the council, worth about $4.4 billion, and 95 by the sub-committees, worth about $291 million. Its release of 13 August put July at 33 projects worth about $525 million, of which 23 came from the board at about $494 million and ten from the sub-committees at about $31 million.
Add the board’s two components and January to July comes to 204 projects worth about $4.9 billion. That is a sum of the council’s published parts, not a figure it has stated in any release covering those months.
Against 440 projects and $6.7 billion, that is a fall of more than half in the number of projects and about a quarter in capital. The average approved project rose from about $15 million to about $24 million. In July alone the board approved 67 projects worth about $944 million last year and 23 worth about $494 million this year. A rise in average size is what a shift toward fewer and more capital-intensive approvals would look like. No sector breakdown of the seven-month capital appears on page 1 of the 13 August Khmer release, in AKP’s English version of 14 August or in the Xinhua report; pages 2 to 5 of the release were not read.
The series has moved hard in both directions. The same seven-month comparison a year earlier was up 88% on projects and 84% on capital, and the 2025 full year up 52% and 45%, both on the board’s basis. One year against another does not make a direction.
Registered capital is not money that arrived, and it includes domestic capital: of the first half’s approved total, 41.74% was Cambodian and 35.75% Chinese, according to the 14 July statement. The National Bank of Cambodia publishes a separate estimate of foreign investment entering the country, which its 2025 annual report puts at $5.2 billion, up 18.2% on the $4.4 billion the same report now records for 2024. The Post, citing a first-half report, put inflows at about $2.6 billion for January to June 2026, up 18.5%, with the increase concentrated in the financial sector at 110.9% against 8.9% outside it. The bank’s technical notes say the inflow figure is estimated from non-resident direct investment reported by the banking sector and by listed enterprises holding council preferential treatment.
The seven-month release also carries about 177,000 jobs. Those are figures applicants projected at registration, and nothing in the council’s releases for January to August 2026 records a job created. The recount cannot be done for employment at all, because the 14 July statement gave no jobs figure for the sub-committees’ 95 first-half projects. A methodological note from the council would settle that and fix the date the two channels were first combined.
The provincial projects now sit inside the headline. There are 105 of them across the seven months, a third of the 309, and between them about $320 million of the $5.22 billion. Each falls below the line that sends an application to a provincial sub-committee rather than to the board, and until the presentation changed they were reported beneath the headline rather than inside it.