Cambodia

Cambodia's Military Spending at 1.45% of GDP as Governance Scores Remain Low

Cambodia, classified here within the Asia region, pairs a modest debt load and a small nominal defense budget with a low Correlates of War capability score, per the figures assembled below.

Economy and Fiscal Position Cambodia's economy was valued at $46.4 billion in 2024, per World Bank WDI figures, with GDP per capita of $2,628 and a population of 17.6 million. The IMF's 2026 World Economic Outlook puts government debt at 27.1 percent of GDP. Foreign exchange reserves stood at $21.2 billion in 2025, per IMF IFS — a reserve figure nearly half the size of the economy itself as measured by the GDP figure above.

Defense Spending and Capability SIPRI's 2025 figures put Cambodian military expenditure at $739.0 million, or 1.45 percent of GDP under SIPRI's own GDP series; this ratio should not be recomputed against the World Bank GDP figure above, which uses a different denominator. Active personnel numbered 124,000 as of 2022, per COW NMC, against the 17.6 million population recorded above for 2024, and the same source assigns a CINC score of 0.0016291989 for that year, a composite measure built from demographic, industrial and military inputs rather than spending alone. No nuclear-warhead figure appears in this dataset.

Governance V-Dem's 2025 figures score Cambodia's electoral democracy index at 0.183 and liberal democracy index at 0.051, both on a 0-1 scale. State capacity is scored at 0.068, the lowest of the three governance measures recorded here.

Energy Primary energy consumption was 0.288 exajoules in 2023, per Our World in Data, and electricity generation reached 17.76 TWh in 2025. Oil and gas production are both recorded at 0.0 TWh for 2016, indicating no domestic oil or gas output captured in that year's data.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF IFS, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy)