The global economic recovery this year continues to benefit Cambodian banks, although insiders said yesterday macro-economic press-ures were still weighing on the industry. Some of Cambodia’s biggest banks had enjoyed a strong 2011 thanks to a rebound in lending, deposits and profits, officials said. Economists, ...

Dozens of human-rights activists are staging flash “faint-ins” at high-street retailers across Europe to illustrate the high incidence of mass fainting in Cambodia’s apparel factories. Protestors from the Clean Clothes Campaign, an alliance of organizations in 15 European countries dedicated to improving working conditions in ...

The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture, or Cedac, has built a $500,000 rice mill in Phnom Penh’s Pur Senchey district in the hope of exporting more milled rice overseas, an official said yesterday. “We expect that in 2013, we would export between 200 tons and ...

Strikes staged by garment and footwear factory workers more than tripled in 2012 compared to 2011, with more than 100,000 workers participating in at least one strike, an official of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) said yesterday. “Historically, prior to any elections, we will see a ...

A Lao government delegation visiting the Kingdom’s capital last week anticipates that a joint visa scheme that would allow entry to both countries on a single visa will take at least two to three years to implement. Manoxay Vilayhane, second secretary at the Lao embassy in ...

Four Preah Vihear villagers filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc yesterday, requesting help in gaining permission to farm 93 hectares of land the Provincial Forestry Administration barred them from last year. The four complainants represent 65 families who have farmed the area in Kolen district ...

Provincial military police confiscated three tractors transporting three metres of luxury wood and two circular saws travelling out of Kampong Speu’s protected Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary yesterday. Chea Hean, director of Natural Resource and Wildlife Preservation Organisation (NRWPO), arrived to investigate illegal logging in the sanctuary ...

Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh has categorically denied a report that Cambodian troops have been sent into Thailand to stir trouble in areas where the People’s Democratic Reform Committee is staging anti-government protests. Defence spokesman Col Paphathip Sawangsaeng said Gen Tea Banh made the denial to ...

Cambodians staged a protest Thursday to share the concerns of more than a quarter of a million people who are calling on Laos to suspend construction of the Don Sahong hydropower project on the Mekong River. At the protest Chhith Sam Ath, country director of the ...

Cambodian authorities have held two rounds of talks with garment factory owners and unions under a new mechanism to help break a deadlock over increasing the workers’ monthly minimum wage but to no avail. But Labor Minister Ith Sam Heng said that he expected the Garment ...

A new study has revealed that the last breeding population of leopards in Cambodia is at immediate risk of extinction after declining a staggering 72 percent over a five-year period. The population represents the last remaining leopards in all of eastern indochina – a region that ...

American national and orphanage director Daniel Stephen Johnson was tried on Friday at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on charges that he sexually abused five boys last year. The court heard that Johnson, 36, the director of the Hope Transitions Christian orphanage in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey ...

The head of Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU), Oum Yingtieng, has officially announced their mission to catch “Corruption Ghosts” that has been lurking and sucking the government’s blood relentlessly. Prior to the campaign, Tieng puts forth a notice to all state institutions that they have 3 months to ...

The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) will soon begin a national payment system that will allow the clearance of checks at all banks within a day, as well as facilitate intra-bank electronic payments, Nguon Sokha, director general of the NBC, said yesterday. Through the establishment of the national ...

Australian mining firms Emerald Resources and Renaissance Minerals have agreed to merge in an all-stock deal that aims at creating synergies to develop gold projects in northeastern Cambodia, the companies said in a joint announcement yesterday. ...

The Ministry of Agriculture has taken action to prevent millers from purchasing paddy rice at below market price from farmers, currently struggling to produce enough marketable rice crop to make ends meet. The ministry, in a statement issued on Monday, ordered all provincial agricultural departments to ...

Aiming to one day become a major manufacturing base in Cambodia, Sihanoukville faces an uphill battle in attracting workers, provincial officials said yesterday.Yow Khemara, director of the Department of Labour and Vocational Training at Preah Sihanouk province, said Sihanoukville currently lacks about 4,000 workers in ...

The Commerce Ministry has received more than 5,000 applications from companies to register their trademark in the first three months of this year – the same as for all of last year – a senior ministry official said yesterday. ...

Another five people were arrested and five tractors seized in Preah Vihear province’s Prey Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary late last week, but all were subsequently released after being educated and ordered to pay fines, an environmental ranger said on Sunday. ...

The Kingdom’s inflation rate fell month-on-month in November for the first time all year, dropping 0.7 per cent from October, according to National institute of Statistics data. However, year-on-year inflation in November increased 5.7 per cent, the NIS reported. “We see that we got a bigger supply ...