Cambodian scholars and researchers expressed their concern about the child birth rate in the country which has a birth spacing policy, while the neighboring countries stand about one million child birth rate per year like in Vietnam and Thailand, local media reported on Thursday. 'According to the research, our country gets the 40,000 child birth rate per year after the Health Ministry set up the policy of birth spacing in the family in purpose of reducing poverty and help the mother to live healthy and firm,' Klot Thida, head of Royal Academy of Cambodia was quoted by the DAP News in its website as saying in a seminar about using chemicals on Thursday. 'Sometimes, we could not compete with neighboring countries in terms of human resources because we have small number of population. And sometimes, the diseases also caused the baby die,' she said, adding that 'using chemicals in food and other materials including in milk is one of concern for growing child and those who are human resources from the country.' In Cambodia, birth spacing is widely spread for Cambodian families to reduce number of children and the government also helps people to meet with millennium development goals. According to DAP News, the population of Cambodia was 13.4 million in 2008 and by July 11, 2010, it rose to 14.3 million with an annual growth rate of 1.55 percent. Cambodian families have 3-4 children in average. So the country's population could increase to 17.5 million in 2025. 