New Zealand supports Angkor restoration

SIEM REAP : New Zealand will offer US$3.7 million in aid to Cambodia to support a five-year Angkor Wat preservation project.
Accoriding to local media reports, the funding was signed, last week, between Bun Narith, Cambodia’s Apsara Authority and Brent Rapson the first secretary of New Zealand Embassy to Bangkok.
The project will be implemented in five years from 2014 to 2019.
No details are available on how much Apsara Authority is contributing to the project. It is the sole beneficiary of all the entrance fees collected at the Angkor Historical Park and it would be expected that it would use some of the revenue for renovation work and community projects. It does not release any details of how it spends entrance fees.
It is the second project funded by New Zealand. The first five-year project on Angkor Participatory Natural Resource Management and Livelihoods ended in September last year.
Angkor Wat, which dates back to the 9th to 12th century, was inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1992.
The government said in December last year that 16 countries, including France, Japan, India, China, Switzerland and New Zealand, and 28 international organisations have assisted Cambodia to restore the site since then.
The park is the kingdom’s largest cultural tourism destination, which covers a total area of 40,000 hectares with a lot of ancient temples and resorts.
Siem Reap provincial tourism department reported international tourist arrivals to the Angkor Wat Historical Park, January to March, this year, reached 778,740 visits, an increase of 12% over the same period last year. Last year, it welcomed 2.23 million foreign tourists increasing 8% year-on-year. South Korea, China, Vietnam, Japan and Russia were the top five source markets in Q1.

Sourced: ttrweekly