Economic policy and administration

The World Bank and Asian Development Bank issued a report on Tuesday, urging Cambodia to improve its electricity supply and workforce in order to be competitive. Intermittent electricity, informal payments and a low-skill labor force are all major constraints to doing business in Cambodia, the ...

The Thai government’s move to stabilise rice prices for the 2014 harvest season has prompted mixed reactions from local rice industry representatives. Sok Puthyvuth, president of the Cambodia Rice Federation said yesterday the policy would impact Cambodia negatively when Thailand is forced to sell ...

The Minister of Industry and Handicrafts on Monday said the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce (CCC), the country’s most prominent private-sector lobbying group, should be doing more for the country’s entrepreneurs. “Honestly, even though the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce has more resources, it has not provided ...

Transparent reporting of garment factory compliance in Cambodia is continuing to help to improve conditions for workers, according to a new report. In its third online transparency report, the International Labor Organization (ILO’s) Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) programme said two of the 13 factories in the Low Compliance group had ...

Cambodia is one of only two economies worldwide to have declined in global value chain (GVC) participation since 1995, according to the World Trade Organization’s latest study. The WTO’s World Trade Report 2014, released Monday, shows Cambodia’s overall percentage of GVC participation – one country’s contribution ...

The launch of an unrated Laotian government bond on Thailand’s bond market could pave the way for Cambodia to issue its own government bond denominated in Thai baht. The Bangkok Post reported yesterday that Thailand’s Finance Ministry and Public Debt Management Office had allowed Cambodia, Vietnam ...

Edible bird’s nest producers have called on the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) to facilitate the industry’s access to the Chinese market. Nang Sothy, president of the Cambodia Bird’s Nest Federation, said yesterday that the association had requested the MoC to include the delicacy on the list ...

While the smoke has long cleared on January’s violent garment strikes, for many of the 23 workers and unionists arrested and tried on charges widely considered to be baseless, the ordeal is far from over. Nine months after security forces used deadly violence to end strikes ...

Cambodia’s milled rice export hit 269,370 tonnes in the first nine months of 2014, up 1.2 per cent from 266,123 tonnes over the same period last year, according to latest official data. Seventy-seven companies have brokered Cambodian rice for 57 countries and regions around the world, ...

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 ...

Despite ongoing protests over the minimum wage in the garment industry and the political deadlock that lasted well in to July, Cambodia registered over 3,000 new businesses from January to September this year. The latest data from the Ministry of Commerce reveal there were 3,025 newly ...

Following a meeting with parliamentarians at the National Assembly yesterday, Minister of Labour Ith Sam Heng announced the ministry would form a 27-member committee to study technical aspects of raising the minimum wage in Cambodia’s garment sector. The new committee will comprise nine representatives each from ...

He may be just the police chief of Battambang, a languid riverside town in western Cambodia, but, recently, people have taken to calling Brig Gen Sar Theth the $7 million man. On Sept. 19, Brig Gen Theth’s officers tracked three Thai men in a pickup truck ...

More than 1,000 garment workers gathered in Phnom Penh and marched through the city center Sunday, demanding a “decent wage” from their factories, the largest garment-sector demonstration in the capital since military police fatally suppressed a protest for higher wages in January. ...

Garment and footwear exports earned $3.92 billion over the first eight months of 2014, up more than 7 percent year-on-year, according to new figures from the Ministry of Commerce. The latest numbers show a slowdown after year-on-year earnings for the first six months of the year ...

Around 300 Cambodian government officials, business leaders, economists and researchers met in an international investment conference here on Monday to exchange views on the prospect of Cambodia’s economic development. ...

Cambodia’s economic growth is forecasted to reach 7.2 percent in 2014, and 7.5 percent next year according to a report by World Bank on Monday. The report said Cambodia’s garments continue to be the key engine of growth, followed by construction. The poverty rate continued to ...

The total amount of loans in Cambodia’s banking sector could rise to $30 billion by 2020, according to a report released today by Mekong Strategic Partners, a new investment and advisory fund. Amid such growth, banks will be challenged to drastically expand their operations and will ...

Workers in Cambodia’s capital earning less than $120 per month are living below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning’s own calculation. At a September 17 workshop on the garment industry minimum wage, International Labor Organization Cambodia national director Tun Sophorn cited Ministry of ...

As a new round of Cambodian wage negotiations approaches this month, major U.S. and European retailers who source from the country say they will be watching the talks carefully and want to see fair pay for workers. Representatives of the brands like Gap, Levi Strauss, and ...

Cambodia is experiencing a runaway property boom that must be constrained by laws and regulations in order to draw investment from European developers, which are largely absent in the country, experts said at an industry conference in Phnom Penh on Wednesday. Simon Griffiths, senior manager at ...

Resintech Bhd, a local Polyethylene and poly vinyl chloride (PVC) pipe manufacturer, will tap into the rubber plantation sector in a bid to diversify its business segment given the healthy outlook on the rubber industry. Resintech’s managing director Datuk Teh Kim Poo said that according to ...

Cambodia needs increased investments, and for that, deeper regional as well as global integration is crucial, Moody’s Investors Service has said. The B2 sovereign bond rating is constrained by the small size of the economy, low per capita income and high level of dollarization while robust ...

CP Cambodia, a subsidiary of Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Company Limited, has confirmed plans to double its swine production by 2019 to meet Cambodia’s demand for pork products. ...