Economy and commerce

Auditors from the Coca-Cola Company visited Oddar Meanchey province on Friday to investigate allegations of land grabbing against sugar plantations that supply the global drinks giant, but called off a community meeting because of a heavy police presence, an NGO said Sunday. Chun Bora of the ...

As buyers swoop in to purchase Thai rice at garage-sale prices, Cambodian exporters are dealing with lower than usual rates, and the results are being felt all the way down the supply chain to the farmers themselves. New figures from rice industry publication Oryza show that ...

Authorities in Svay Rieng town are ignoring locals’ complaints over a Chinese firm that has allegedly been filling in a river in preparation to build a canal, villagers said yesterday. More than 130 families in Svay Teu commune, Svay Rieng province, have delivered petitions to provincial ...

Australia-based energy company Star8 officially launched operations on Friday at its solar-powered factory just outside of Phnom Penh. The ceremony marked the commencement of production on solar-powered tuk-tuks, the mainstay of the company. Hun Many, the youngest son of Premier Hun Sen, and Alison Burrows, the Australian ...

Two union representatives said that they were detained and “educated” Thursday for distributing leaflets calling on workers to participate in a nationwide strike next month. Yin Saroeun, secretary-general of the National Trade Unions Coalition, said police detained him and his colleague, Chuob Noek, at about 11 ...

Though an occasional mango or pineapple can be spotted on Eung Uy Kheam’s sleepy farm in Kampot province, it’s the 130 durian trees that the fourth-generation farmer calls his cash crop. In Kampot, on Cambodia’s southwest coast, a pilot project led by the provincial Department ...

Five Kompong Chhnang villagers locked in a land dispute with a company owned by the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem, who had repeatedly tried—and failed—to file a complaint with their provincial court, were summoned for questioning at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court ...

In 2011, the Environment Ministry entered into a deal with the Ratana Cooperation and Construction company to swap its valuable 2,400-square-meter location on Sihanouk Boulevard in Phnom Penh’s Tonle Bassac commune for a 9,000-square-meter plot of land and a new headquarters 20 km away in ...

Hong Kong technology company Pacnet says it’s expanding its virtual private network (VPN) services to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. In a statement released Wednesday, the company said the expansion involved global internet protocol VPN services based on multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday said that Cambodia’s economy remains strong with an expected growth of 7 percent this year. Hun Sen made the comments during the 2014 Cambodia Outlook Conference on “Cambodia the next five years – Reforms and Competitiveness in Integration Region. ...

Following a complaint from the Free Trade Union (FTU) over the Ministry of Labor’s refusal to register 10 local branches of its organization, a ministry official said Wednesday that the constitutional right to freedom of association has been suspended until a new trade union law ...

With the 15-storey Vimean Keo Choronai Condominium close to completion, some 70 per cent of its apartments have already been sold. Vimean Keo Choronai sits in what eventually will be an expansive, leafy garden setting on National Road 1 about 600 metres from Monivong Bridge ...

Cambodian manufacturers are at risk of being blocked from exporting to the United States for using pirated software, IT industry bodies warned yesterday. Speaking at a seminar that was held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Phnom Penh, Michael Mudd, the secretary general of the Asia-Pacific Open ...

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and Vietnam increased only about 3.4 per cent last year compared to 2012, data from the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh showed yesterday. An embassy official said the sluggish growth could be attributed to the political deadlock between the Cambodian People’s Party ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al failed to meet the villagers locked in a long-running land dispute with the Chinese-owned company Union Development Group (UDG) on Wednesday, despite visiting company officials in Koh Kong province, according to a rights worker and a provincial official. Mr. Sam Al ...

Third-party auditors hired by The Coca-Cola Company are conducting an audit of Cambodian sugar suppliers, NGO and community representatives said yesterday. “Coke has commissioned them to conduct an assessment on their suppliers. They will talk to all parties, the community, NGOs and the company,” said Eang ...

NagaCorp recently announced it would invest $369 million in its latest project opposite the Buddhist Institute. The Hong Kong-listed casino operator’s latest Phnom Penh venture, Naga2,will include a casino, a hotel and a conference hall. The announcement of the investment by NagaCorp, Cambodia’s biggest casino operator, was ...

Borey River Town, a residential property development around three kilometres northeast of downtown Phnom Penh on National Road 6A has been selling well for the first two months of the year, according to Teng Rithy, the development’s general manager. Rithy said that the rate of sales ...

Armed soldiers will continue to patrol Veng Sreng Street, the garment factory-lined thoroughfare in Phnom Penh’s Pur Senchey district where military police shot dead five workers during a nationwide strike last month, until labor unrest in the garment sector subsides, the deputy commander of the ...

The International Finance Corporation’s compliance ombudsman has officially accepted a complaint filed by ethnic minority families in Ratanakkiri province against the IFC for investing in rubber plantations accused of stealing land and clearing forests. In a letter sent to the families on Monday, the ombudsman deems ...

It will be years before oil starts to be produced by energy giant Chevron’s offshore site in the Gulf of Thailand, a senior Cambodian official said yesterday. Meng Saktheara, secretary of state at the Ministry of Mines and Energy, said that negotiations over taxation have continued ...

Cambodia’s first coal-fired power plant, which is expected to fill shortages in demand by producing an additional 100 megawatts of electricity every year, commenced full-time operations yesterday. Representatives from Malaysian company Leader Universal Ltd (LU), which built the plant, joined Prime Minister Hun Sen and ...

Garment workers’ calls for a $160 minimum wage are justified and should be honored, a new report by an international team of academics and labor experts has found. The authors—including a team from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, South Korean and ...

The Pacific Asia Travel Association will hold the 37th PATA Travel Mart at Diamond Island Convention & Exhibition Centre, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The event is being hosted by the ministry of tourism of Cambodia and will take place from September 17th-19th. PTM 2014 will offer delegates the ...