With GDP growth averaging around 9% for the past decade, Cambodia is certainly attracting interest from potential investors. It has possibly the most investor-friendly environment in Asean with no exchange controls, no restrictions on repatriation of profit, and no discrimination between foreign and local investors. Moreover, ...

Rural Cambodian communities are seeing economic benefits as a result of a biomass and farming resilience project run by GERES, a French NGO. As part of the AREA project, 200 households in Kampong Chhnang province are growing 22 varieties of trees to negate the effects of ...

A dam project set to flood thousands of hectares of protected forest and displace about 1,500 indigenous minority villagers in one of Koh Kong province’s most precious ecosystems should be scrapped, opposition Sam Rainsy Party MP Son Chhay said yesterday. The 109-megawatt dam project in the ...

Toll Royal Railways (TRR), the current operator of Cambodia’s dilapidated rail network, restarted freight services to Kampot province yesterday, four months after it suspended its work. TRR’s resumption comes on the heals of a rival proposal to manage the train network by a consortium that includes one ...

The Taiwanese-owned garment company Grand Twins International (Cambodia) Plc says it intends to list on the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) next month, in a boost for the Kingdom’s nascent stock market. Phnom Penh Securities (PPS), an underwriter for Grand Twins International (GTI), said yesterday the company ...

Some questions remain about whether hydro dams on the upper Mekong River in China exacerbated conditions during Cambodia’s devastating drought of 2010, environmental groups say, as China’s dam program powers ahead. When the first power-generating unit was switched on last month at China’s giant 262-metre tall ...

A law on the management of farmland currently being drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture is a threat to private landowners as it imposes criminal penalties for farmers who do not abide by new powers the government would have to demarcate land, a human rights ...

Villagers belonging to a Thai activist group filed a complaint to Thailand’s Administrative Court yesterday for the cancellation of an agreement form the country’s Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand to buy power from a controversial mainstream Mekong dam in Laos, an NGO representative said yesterday. “According ...

Ministry of Commerce officials maintained that low import taxes and increased demand from consumers were the causes behind the 45.26 increase in vehicle imports in the first half of 2012 compared to the same period last year. The data showed 486,827 vehicles, of all makes and ...

Khmer Resources Investment, which is backed by the Cambodian government, aims to list in Hong Kong within two years, chairman Cao Yunde said. “We intend to leverage the capital market of Hong Kong to finance our growth through a public listing so as to maximise the ...

Anco Water Supply, a private company that is supplying Sihanoukville with access to fresh water has alleviated a water shortage that began when a state-owned reservoir dried up more than a week ago. Preah Sihanouk provincial governor Sbuon Sarath said that running water had been restored ...

Cargos entering and leaving through Phnom Penh Autonomous Port, the kingdom’s 2nd largest port, increased by 34 percent in the first three months of this year due to rising trade activities, a senior port official said Thursday. During the January-March period this year, the state-owned port ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that the rapid growth of Phnom Penh’s population coupled with the rampant construction of new property projects means that there would always be a shortage of water and electricity in the capital. Speaking to a crowd of thousands who had ...

A controversial land titling program set up by Prime Minister Hun Sen has been suspended ahead of the July 28 elections, but critics say the program should not be restarted. The titling program itself began in December 2012 and is expected to end after elections scheduled ...

Caffe Bene, South Korea’s second-largest coffee chain, on Tuesday announced plans to open in Cambodia, according to a Korean media report. But while its entrance adds one more competitor to the more than half-a-dozen coffee chains already in the country, local franchises said the market is ...

The private sector has called on the government to review Cambodia’s taxation law, a statute that business leaders say is outdated and needs to change if Cambodia wants to continue to attract foreign investment. Led by Cambodia Chamber of Commerce (CCC) president Kith Meng, a delegation ...

The head of the Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) program said yesterday that consultations on its new public-disclosure initiative have been going on for more than a year, contrary to claims by a garment factory representative who characterised the process as hasty. Jill Tucker, chief technical adviser ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government as the two sides remained stalled in talks in a deadlock over disputed national elections. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) said in a public statement that it could not guarantee that any agreements made with Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian ...

Opposition vice president Kem Sokha, who is facing court charges in Cambodia, is currently in the United States, hoping to find support for his party and a way to break Cambodia’s political stalemate. Kem Sokha is in the US to speak to supporters, as well ...

The government affirmed its commitment to bilingual education for ethnic minority children in Cambodia’s northern provinces at a UNESCO conference in Bangkok last week. Speaking at the fourth International Conference on Language and Education: Multilingual Education for all in Asia and the Pacific, Ton Sa Im, ...