Toll Royal to Restart Rail Services Next Month
Less than four months after suspending work on Cambodia’s dilapidated railway network, Toll Royal Railways (TRR), the network’s operator, has informed the government that it will recommence transporting construction materials needed to build the southern line on Aug. 1, company officials said yesterday. The decision to ...
Water Supply Shares Fall Below Launch Price
The share price of the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) fell 50 riel yesterday to 6,250 riel, or about $1.52, bringing the authority’s share price lower than its initial public offering (IPO) in April. The decline matches views expressed by investors here that the authority’s ...
In Speech, Hun Sen Implicated His Cousin in Land Grabbing
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday implicated his cousin as being behind an attempt to sell land in Svay Rieng province that was set aside by the government in 2009 to provide hundreds of land titles to villagers on a social land concession. Speaking at a ...
Living with the enemy
Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted. While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families ...
Rice mills need to show solidarity, minister says
At the Cambodian Rice Forum 2012, Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun said that if the Kingdom wants to reach the government’s goal of exporting 1 million tons of rice annually by 2015, rice mills need to join forces and work closely together. Such an association [of rice ...
Cambodia's economy grows by 7.3% in 2012: PM
Cambodia achieved a GDP growth rate of 7.3 percent last year, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday, forecasting that the growth would be higher than 7 percent this year. Addressing a conference on 2013 Cambodia Outlook, he said the growth last year came from strong growth ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2013-02/20/c_132180432.htm
Illegal Logging a Challenge for Carbon Trading
A Ministry of Agriculture official said yesterday he was aware of allegations of illegal logging by Royal Cambodian Armed Forces soldiers within protected community forests in Oddar Meanchey province and was looking into it. “I am following this case, but I haven’t received their petition yet,” ...
New Online Service Launched to Smooth Tax Payment
In a bid to ease the collection of the recently introduced tax on properties worth more than $25,000, The Ministry of Finance has launched an online service to help people get the forms they need to pay the tax. In a statement released last week, the ministry said ...
Landless Cambodians see nothing sweet in EU sugar deal
An EU scheme to boost trade with developing nations is fuelling land grabs in Cambodia, activists say, with thousands evicted from their property to make way for a booming sugar industry. Campaigners are taking their fight to European supermarkets, encouraging a boycott of Cambodian sugar, which ...
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1211528/1/.html
PM's land titling scheme full of ambiguity
Adorned in new military uniforms, about 400 more young volunteers who have been enlisted into Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ambitious national land-titling scheme departed from Diamond Island yesterday armed with measuring tapes, computers and GPS units. The budding surveyors are the latest group of some 2,000 ...
Malaysia Firm Buys Majority In Yellow Pages
The owner of Cambodia Yellow Pages has agreed in principle to sell a 51 percent stake to the subsidiary of Malaysian technology firm CBSA Bhd. in a deal worth $2.04 million, an official at the company said Monday. According to a disclosure last week from CBSA ...
Philippines and Cambodia in South China Sea row
The Philippines has summoned Cambodia’s ambassador over comments linked to Manila’s territorial row with Beijing. Hos Sereythonh was asked to explain remarks accusing the Philippines and Vietnam of playing “dirty politics” over the issue of Asean and the South China Sea. [H]e did not turn up on ...
Arrested Land Officials Now Free on Bail
Four Land Management Ministry officials charged with corruption last week were released on bail yesterday, less than five days after arriving at Prey Sar prison for detention ahead of trial, officials said. Srung Leang, director of the prison’s center no. 1, said he received the written release order ...
Cambodia's Economic Growth Expects To Be 7% In 2012
“Cambodia’s economic growth will stand about 7 per cent this year,” director general of National Bank of Cambodia His Excellency Chea Chanto said. He adds: “Cambodia is trying to diversify its economies to boost the growth.” At the same time, the report from World Bank said: ...
Kep first province to wrap land-titling scheme
Seven months after Prime Minister Hun Sen unveiled an ambitious plan to demarcate 1.8 million hectares of state land and formally acknowledge those who live on it, the completion of the first – albeit the smallest – of eight affected provinces has wrapped up. Marking the ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/National/kep-first-province-to-wrap-land-titling-scheme.html
Poorest nations win intellectual property waiver
The world’s poorest nations have won an eight-year extension of a waiver on intellectual property rules at a session of the World Trade Organisation’s TRIPS Council. A session of the 159-nation WTO’s TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) Council has ruled the waiver for 34 ...
Evictees back on land
Dozens of families at Borei Keila have moved back on to land they were evicted from last year, despite intimidation and threats of arrest by security forces employed by developer Phan Imex. Earlier this month, security guards tore down the shelters of 12 families who had ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013032664678/National/evictees-back-on-land.html
Workers not allowed to march on Labor Day
Around 20,000 workers from the garment, construction, tourism, banking, service and agriculture sectors want to march to present a petition to the National Assembly on International Labor Day, May 1, but Phnom Penh City Hall did not approve the rally. City hall asked them to wait ...
http://www.thecambodiaherald.com/cambodia/detail/1?page=13&token=YWNjNWUyNzMwYmE
Former Mfone Employees Protest for Severance Pay
More than 100 former employees of bankrupt mobile phone operator Mfone traveled from three provinces yesterday to protest outside the firm’s shuttered office on Phnom Penh’s Monivong Boulevard demanding their severance pay. Sok Samphorn, an engineer who was employed by Mfone, said employees from Phnom Penh, ...
Ethnic Banong Thwart Group of Illegal Loggers in Mondolkiri
More than 100 Banong ethic minority villagers in Mondolkiri province on Wednesday stopped and briefly apprehended a group of 11 outsiders who they say were caught illegally logging timber in the area, villagers said yesterday. The villagers say that they took it upon themselves to stop ...