On 20 January 2026, Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a sub-decree establishing the National Research Foundation (NRF) as a public trust, aimed at strengthening national research capacity and channeling scientific research and innovation toward Cambodia’s socio-economic development priorities. The NRF is framed as a centralized legal and financial mechanism that can pool resources from the national budget, development partners, and other lawful sources, with a mandate to fund research and innovation across public institutions and partner organizations under principles of transparency, professional governance, and accountability.
Crucially, the sub-decree treats the NRF not merely as a funding initiative, but as an institutional mechanism. By creating the NRF as a public trust, the government signals a move away from ad-hoc and fragmented research funding toward a more continuous, national-level approach. This matters because research ecosystems do not scale on short-term project logic alone. Laboratories require multi-year predictability, researchers depend on credible grant cycles, and institutions need clear rules and funding pipelines. If operationalized effectively, a national foundation can become the backbone that translates innovation ambition into routine practice.
The strong emphasis on transparency, professional governance, and accountability reflects an understanding that in research funding, credibility is as important as resources. Donors and domestic stakeholders care not only about how much funding is available, but also about how decisions are made. By highlighting governance upfront, the sub-decree appears designed to pre-empt common risks, including the diversion of funds toward connected institutions rather than competitive proposals, weak peer-review and evaluation standards, and limited public reporting that could undermine trust in outcomes.
The NRF also aligns with broader “knowledge economy” ambitions. Moving up the value chain increasingly depends on research capacity, technological adaptation, and innovation systems, not only on infrastructure spending or investment incentives. In this sense, the NRF reflects a shift from strategy documents toward delivery institutions, echoing global practice where governments translate development visions into operational funding mechanisms rather than slogans.