In an outbuilding at Lok Sear’s rice milling operation in Kandal province, two four-meter-high cylindrical machines vibrate and hum as the occasional chicken and duck pecks near the concrete blocks holding them up. While they do both feature a thinck band of aluminium around their ...

With the number of tourists visiting the country increasing rapidly, hotels are coming under strain due to lack of skilled chefs and waiters in the industry, according to hotel managers. In the first six months of 2012, international visitors reached 1.75 million, a 26.8 percent ...

Adding to a growing body of research into the flaws of Cambodia’s $142 million railway rehabilitation project, a report published yesterday said soaring debt levels are crippling families forcibly relocated by the project. In the report by land rights organization Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), researchers tracked ...

The effects of the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 on the Cambodian economy showed how perilous having a narrow economic base can be. Since the Kingdom’s economy is dependent on a few “pillars”-garments, construction, tourism and agriculture-downturns in any of those sectors can ...

In the hilly wilderness across southwestern Cambodia, the foundations of the country’s strengthening bonds with China are taking root. It is there that large dams supported by Chinese money are being built to literally bring the impoverished Southeast Asian nation out of darkness. The largest of ...

The UN’s assessment suggests that Cambodia is one of the top five countries that have made significant progress toward meeting its MDGs by 2015. The poverty rate has dropped dramatically from 47.50 percent in 1993 to 34.70 percent in 2004 and 23 percent in 2011, ...

A BHP Billiton mining deal being investigated for alleged corruption was personally overseen by Cambodian strongman Hun Sen, diplomatic cables reveal. The miner’s aborted attempt to establish a bauxite mine in Cambodia, and its hospitality program for Chinese officials at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, are at ...

Tiffany & Company is quietly building a diamond-polishing factory in Cambodia, a country popularly associated more with killing fields and land mines than baubles. Some of Japan’s biggest manufacturers are also rushing to set up operations in Phnom Penh to make wiring harnesses for cars and ...

The World Bank has warned that the rapid growth of lending by Cambodia’s Banks is still a concern, despite a recent slow-down in credit disbursals. “Credit growth, which has been driven largely by wholesale and retail financing, and starting in 2011 agriculture financing, has eased to ...

Their stories have become all too familiar – Cambodian fishermen enslaved on fishing boats after being promised lucrative jobs overseas. They’re also becoming increasingly common. Anti-trafficking NGOs told the Post this week that they have noticed an exponential increase in the number of trafficking complaints from ...

Cambodia’s share of modern biomass in total energy consumption is among the highest in the world, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Bank and the International Energy Agency. The report also found that growth in Cambodia’s dependence on renewable energy excluding traditional biomass ...

About two months after Phnom Penh-based Tonlesap Airlines suspended its chartered flights, the local carrier’s future seems as cloudy as ever. Vann Chanty, the director of air transport with Cambodia’s State Secretariat of Civil Aviation, said yesterday that the airline had not resumed operations and that ...

The Kingdom’s tax revenue increased 27.85 per cent in the first two months compared to a year earlier, a figure the opposition party said is low due to corruption and tax cheats. According to the data from the General Department of Taxation (GDT), total tax revenue ...

Phnom Penh, a city once fabled for its stately colonial buildings and boulevards, and its serene riverside setting, is becoming a city of glaring contrasts. An economy left in ruins by the years of war and violent revolution in the 1970s and 80s grew at a ...

Despite facing a rampant graft problem that has seen Cambodians paying bribes far more often than their regional neighbors, they have growing faith in the government’s ability to fight it, a Transparency International survey has found. TI’s 2013 Global Corruption Barometer, which measures perceptions of corruption ...

Thousands of people have been evicted from their homes to make way for a Chinese development in Koh Kong province. But some of the families have returned to their land, leaving a relocation site they say was insufficient for their needs. For families like those of ...

Illustrating a rapidly changing information network in Cambodia, social media played a major role yesterday, as images and videos that appeared to depict fraudulent election activity went viral on Facebook and Twitter. Videos of voters washing off the supposedly indelible security ink used to identify those ...

Officials and business people say solar panels are gaining in popularity in rural areas, where the power grid does not reach. Mao Sangat, director of Solar Energy Cambodia, told the Post yesterday that his company saw increases of installation of solar power systems for families whose ...

The expanding banking sector and the spread of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in rural areas have failed to elbow informal, unlicensed money lending out of the market, industry experts say. Fast and easy access to money – as well as the fear of “losing face” by borrowing ...

Production of Cambodian organic rice is rising rapidly as international demand for the product increases, experts said at a forum for growers and other in­dustry members held Tuesday at the Phnom Penh headquarters of agricultural NGO Cedac. “In the first six months of this year we’ve ...