Economy and commerce

Average Cambodians are to pay the price for stamping out corruption in the customs department. Prices for basic goods, such as food and clothing, rose recently after the department was ordered last week to clean up its act and apply the official tax rate, importers told ...

As salt farmers in Kep and Kampot provinces prepare for the upcoming salt season, they have expressed concerns that unstable weather conditions could cause a supply shortage on the growing domestic market. Salt production in Cambodia usually starts in early January and ends in late ...

A development company with a government concession for a high-end property project on the island of Koh Pos, also known as Snake Island, has announced that it will significantly alter its original plans for the project. The new plan, which must first be submitted for ...

Tonle Bassac is located on the western shore of the Bassac River, from which it takes its name (Tonle is Khmer for ‘river’). Contained by the river to the east, Sihanouk Boulevard to the north and Norodom Boulevard to the west, Tonle Bassac hooks westward ...

Cambodia’s finance sector should increase insurance accessibility to its smallest lenders to help protect against indebtedness at times of disaster, an industry expert said at a conference in Phnom Penh yesterday. Speaking at the Hotel Cambodiana to an audience of industry representatives on rural entrepreneurship, Jaime ...

Cambodia’s banking sector has seen 17 percent rise in lending in the first nine months of the year, the central bank’s figures showed Thursday. The kingdom’s 34 commercial banks had provided a total loan of 6.89 billion U.S. dollars to customers by the end of September ...

Proper accounting and auditing help promote business opportunity and development, finance experts say. Socheat Chum, a senior associate auditor for KPMG, a professional accounting service, told “New Voices” on Monday that companies with “solid” financial statements will “attract more business partners and be able to borrow ...

Cambodia’s first Vietnamese wholesale market is being constructed in Phnom Penh, a Vietnamese trade officer told the Post yesterday. Tran Tu, trade attaché of the Vietnam Trade Office in Cambodia, said the new wholesale market seeks to enhance Vietnamese produce in Cambodia. The wholesale market, will be located ...

U.S. denim giant Levi Strauss continued to deny this week that its products are linked to the strife-torn SL Garment Factory in Phnom Penh, despite new photographs showing Levi’s trademark jeans stacked on benches at the plant in Meanchey district. The Singaporean-owned factory, which also produces ...

Phnom Penh City Hall’s plans to undertake the largest redrawing of the city’s administrative boundaries in decades, by creating five new districts before May’s district and city-level council elections, is likely an effort to gerrymander voting constituencies, a senior opposition party member said Monday. Municipal government ...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday said it expects Cambodia’s economy to grow by 7 percent this year, fueled mostly by the garment, tourism and construction sectors, though risks such as extreme weather and labor market instabilities could cause growth to fluctuate. The IMF also ...

The bilateral trade volume between Cambodia and China rose by 31 percent in the first nine months of the year thanks to closer ties between the two governments, Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Bu Jianguo said Thursday. From January to September this year, the two-way trade volume ...

Vietnamese rubber firm Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) has failed to keep its commitments to address human rights and environmental abuses at its plantations in Cambodia, Global Witness said in a statement yesterday. In May, the London-based NGO published an investigation into two Vietnamese rubber companies ...

Environmental campaign group Global Witness on Thursday called on the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Deutsche Bank to divest immediately from a Vietnamese firm whose rubber plantations in Cambodia are accused of rampant illegal logging and forced evictions of indigenous communities. The call came exactly six ...

Bilateral trade volume between Cambodia and its neighboring Vietnam has hit 2.7 billion U.S. dollars in the first nine months of the year, up 10 percent compared with the 2.45 billion U.S. dollars over the same period last year, a Cambodian trade official said Thursday. Kem ...

Orix, a Japanese financial conglomerate, will acquire about $11 million shares in Acleda Bank PLC, Cambodia’s largest bank, by the year’s end, officials announced Wednesday, although industry executives said the investment appears only exploratory and likely won’t make more than a ripple in the banking ...

Partly triggered by recent flood damage and an increase in road accidents, claims filed with the six general insurance companies in Cambodia spiked more than 160 per cent in the nine months through to September compared with the same time last year, the latest data ...

Clothing giant H&M is testing the garment production waters by entering into exclusivity agreements with factories in Cambodia and Bangladesh, according to a report from Bloomberg News yesterday. This means that Sweden-based H&M would buy all of the factory’s output. H&M, it seems, would still be ...

Cambodia’s Koh Russey Resort development project is aiming to attract large foreign investment by exhibiting in Hong Kong. The resort will showcase its properties and facilities at an exhibition from November 29 until December 1, according to the real estate company CBRE. Expert staff of all departments ...

Cambodia’s customs officials on Wednesday called on all importers to pay”tax fees as stated by law, not pay bribe”to customs officers. The appeal came after some Chinese importers have complained that Cambodian customs officers have increased tariffs for their imported products, or not allowed their ...

Cambodia’s export has seen a 30 percent rise in the first 10 months of 2013 thanks to the surges in the exports of garment, milled rice, and rubber, trade data showed Wednesday. The Southeast Asian nation has exported goods in a total value of 5.87 billion ...

Cambodia is benefiting from a steadily growing service sector, but it needs to clear a number of obstacles to harness the sector’s potential, said a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) report released on Tuesday. The report, entitled Developing the Service Sector as an Engine of Growth ...

Cambodia’s insurance industry recorded a total premium of 31 million U.S. dollars in the first nine months of the year, up 20 percent compared with the same period last year, figures showed Tuesday. It said during January-September period this year, the total amount of claims paid ...

The assets of bankrupt mobile operator Mfone, which owes creditors more than $160 million, have been sold to a single buyer for the bargain price of $10 million, a lawyer involved with the case said Monday. Khan Sereyvuthy, a legal adviser to the government-appointed administrator handling ...