Cambodia meet costs $100M

Hosting the 32nd Southeast Asian Games comes with a price.

Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen revealed that they will be spending a total of over $100 million — or roughly P5.5 billion — just to host the upcoming biennial meet set from 5 to 17 May.

Hun Sen said they received a subsidy from China for the construction of the 60,000-seater Morodok Techo National Sports Complex and used their own budget to cover the construction of other facilities.

“This is a big event which we need to spend a lot of funds on. China helped build Morodok Techo National Sports Complex and we also used our own budget to add to that construction and other facilities,” said Hun Sen during the graduation ceremony of the Cambodian University for Specialties recently.

“In the past, I said that we would be spending around $40 million per year. So, the preparation has been three years so far and now the total budget to be spent will be over $100 million. I don’t hide this fact.”

When the Philippines hosted the meet in 2019, it spent a total of $147 million while Vietnam coughed out a slashed $32.8 million before the government doled out an additional funding of $19 million as the event was held under the cloud of Covid-19 pandemic.

This will be the first time for the Cambodians to host the prestigious regional meet.

Hun Sen admitted that they were offered to host the event several times in the past but he brushed it off due to lack of sports facilities, even saying that “my country is poor, I need to spend money to build what people will need first and would take the SEA Games into account later.”

With that, countries like Brunei, Laos and Myanmar were able to host the meet ahead of Cambodia.

Brunei hosted the meet in 1999 while Laos and Myanmar had their turns in 2009 and 2013, respectively.

“It was not bad to ask for a delay to host the games,” he said in an online report by the