Agriculture

After the fourth Joint Trade Commission (JTC) recently, Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom said that Thailand and Cambodia had the potential to drive two-way trade up by 30 per cent, due to strong growth in 2012. Last year, bilateral trade grew by 40.5 per cent year on ...

Thailand and Cambodia are on a path towards the setting up of a special trade zone that will see the two neighbors actively trade cassava and corn. Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom revealed on Monday that the 4th Thailand-Cambodia Joint Trade Committee meeting, held last week, saw ...

The government on Friday released a draft of a new public policy guide on the county’s contentious land sector, a move that was welcomed by NGOs, who also called for the government to hold further consultations on the draft. Local rights groups have singled out ...

TOEK CHHOU DISTRICT, Kampot province – A donor-backed project launched here on Saturday aims to produce Cambodia’s first export-quality sea salt and invigorate the struggling local salt industry. In a ceremony among Kampot’s vast fields of coastal saltpans and low levees, company representatives from Asia Salt ...

Local authorities and Ratanakkiri provincial forestry officials yesterday visited an area in O’Yadav district where community leaders say a Vietnamese company known as “Company 72” has razed an estimated 1,000 hectares of protected forest since 2011. “The villagers complained to the authorities many times, but ...

A $3 million initiative to purify the quality of rubber trees planted across the country is intended to spur farmers to plant more rubber, a government official said. Ly Phalla, director general of the General Directorate of Rubber at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, ...

The government is drafting a rubber law to regulate the sector in response to the rapid growth of rubber plantations across the country, an official said. Ly Phalla, director general of the General Directorate of Rubber at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, said officials ...

A rights worker and forestry official yesterday contradicted a local newspaper report claiming that more than $100 million worth of timber had been illegally extracted from Ratanakirri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary. Adhoc’s provincial coordinator for Ratanakirri, Chhay Thy, denied having said a total of 16,000 ...

A rubber company that has been repeatedly accused of encroaching on communal land belonging to an ethnic minority in Ratanakkiri province has cleared 150 hectares of forest outside of its economic land concession (ELC) in the past month, according to the senior investigator for local ...

Small pig farmers are struggling to stay in business as illegal imports of pigs from neighbouring countries rise, squeezing them out of the market, industry insiders say. Srun Peu, deputy director of the Cambodia Pig Farmers Association, an organisation with 4,000 members, said the increase in ...

A commune official in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district has filed a lawsuit accusing a human rights worker of incitement and disinformation after villagers the NGO staffer spoke to traveled to Phnom Penh to protest over a land dispute involving a well-known businessman Try Pheap. Pursat ...

Cambodia’s first dairy factory is being planned for Phnom Penh, as one of the owners, a Vietnam-based dairy company, hopes to tap strong local demand for its products. The 2.7-hectare factory, in the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone (PPSEZ), would produce condensed milk, yoghurt and UHT ...

Farmers can expect better rice paddy yields this year compared to last year after the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology yesterday predicted that the rainy season would run from mid-May until November with only a short dry spell. Chhomg Sopal, agriculture development ...

To enhance Cambodian rice yields, the government should encourage private development of rice-seed production and focus its efforts on farmers’ education and regulations that ensure the quality of seed, industry experts say. The Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), under the direction of the Ministry ...

Farmers in Kompong Chhnang province locked in a land dispute with a local businesswoman are waiting for the government to make a decision on who owns the property after student volunteers measured the area earlier this month as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide ...

Rubber exports from Cambodia were up over 17 per cent in the first quarter of 2013, but the revenue from rubber stayed steady as prices decline worldwide, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce. The data showed that in the first quarter of this year, ...

Cambodian export values increased more than 21 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, and officials said the rise was a positive sign for the Kingdom’s economic growth. According to the Ministry of Commerce’s export data ...

More than 100 villagers living on a 20-hectare swath of a rubber plantation in Ratanakkirri province gathered outside O’Chum commune hall yesterday to protest their eviction at the hands of a Chinese company, local officials and rights activists said. About 120 families from Trang Churng Village ...

Cambodia had granted operating licenses to 606 new companies in the first quarter of this year, a 33 percent decrease compared with the 904 firms at the same period last year, the Commerce Ministry’s report showed Tuesday. Yim Rom, an official at the ministry’s statistics ...

In order to boost the Kingdom’s trade performance and improve the quality of lives of farmers along the Thai-Cambodia border, Thailand has agreed to remove import restrictions on Cambodian cassava and maize. Speaking to reporters after the forth meeting of the Joint Trade Committee between Cambodia ...

Authorities in Ratanakkiri province arrested and charged two men with illegal logging after discovering about 4,000 pieces of luxury wood on an economic land concession held by a Vietnamese rubber company, officials said. [Deputy Provincial Forestry Administration Chief Phan Phoeun] said that although the wood ...

Hundreds of indigenous minorities in Ratanakkiri province are being made worse off by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme which, rather than securing their property rights, is contributing to the loss of their ancestral lands, according to a new report. The report supports complaints aired since ...

Officials in Ratanakkiri province are investigating the provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc for incitement after he helped villagers organize a demonstration, ultimately canceled, against a Vietnamese rubber company in O’Yadaw district. Mr. [Chhay] Thy, [Adhoc’s Provincial Investigator] said yesterday that he met with about ...

Thailand will forge closer ties with Cambodia and other neighbouring countries to increase competency in rice trading and boost the bargaining power of Asean countries by setting up a rice-trading zone soon. Also, Thailand will expand crop cooperation to cassava to raise farm incomes in the ...