Three years before Cambodia sheds its least developed country designation, the nation received not a celebration but a challenge: a structured institutional roadmap to transform its National Productivity Centre from a planning body into a genuine engine of economic capability. Delivered by the Asian Productivity Organization in Phnom Penh on July 22, 2026, the Institutional Capability Development Plan asks Cambodia to do what many developing nations struggle with most — not to envision progress, but to operationalize it. The deeper question the document poses is whether a country can build the