Economy and commerce

Romam Gvin could be described as a counterintuitive voter. Intuition might lead you to believe that Mr. Gvin blames the government for the loss of his land to the Vietnamese rubber company that now owns everything for as far as the eye can see here in ...

Sales of Cambodia’s World Trade Organization-certified pepper from Kampot province fell to 21 tonnes at the end of this year’s harvest season, a slight decline from 22 tonnes after the end of last year’s season. Nguon Lay, president of the Kampot Pepper Association, said fast-changing ...

Hui Tien Jien has eaten at a Chinese restaurant called Old Place Seafood two times – and he’s been in Phnom Penh for only two days. Chinese restaurants in Phnom Penh are spreading in response to a flood of tourists from China: tourists who insist ...

Cambodia-based SOMA Energy will construct two bio-mass power-generating plants that convert rice husks into electricity to supply Cambodian farmers working in the provinces. SOMA energy, a subsidiary of SOMA group, has invested nearly $3 million in the construction of the plants, one of which is located ...

Wages for Cambodian garment workers decreased by more than 20 percent in real terms between 2001 and 2011 despite the industry’s exponential increase in exports, which in 2012 were valued at more than $4 billion, according to a recent report by a U.S.-based workers advocacy ...

The success Qatar’s Ooredoo had with being issued a mobile phone licence in Myanmar is an encouraging development for Middle East investors who are looking into the possibility of entering a venture or opening a business in Southeast Asia. Let’s take a look at Cambodia. ...

Cambodia’s rice harvest is forecast to reach 9.1 million tonnes this year, down from an estimated 9.3 million tonnes last year but up from 8.8 million tonnes in 2011, the Food and Agricultural Organization said Thursday. The estimates were contained in the UN agency’s quarterly Crop ...

Sales of Cambodia’s World Trade Organization-certified palm sugar from Kampong Speu province dipped to 12 tonnes at the end of the harvest season this year, about a 30 per cent decline from 2012. Two districts with palm trees in Kampong Speu province were granted geographical indication ...

According to defence lawyer Kao Ty, the court decided to uphold the decision of the provincial court in a closed-door hearing last Friday. “They said if those eight members and workers were released on bail, they would cause a problem again,” he said, adding that ...

Reporters in Cambodia seeking statistics from government ministries and departments are used to being given the brush-off from time to time, but in the run-up to the July 28 national election, things appear to have worsened. The Council for the Develop­ment of Cambodia (CDC) has for ...

Executives at some of the telecommunication firms indebted to bankrupt mobile operator Mfone said Thursday they owe much less than claimed by the company, and will negotiate with Mfone’s administrator to find a resolution before a complaint is filed in court. “We do owe Mfone money, ...

The total weight of goods transported through the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port in the first six months of the year was up 15 percent compared with the same period last year, according to figures released Thursday. Some 1.51 million tons of goods passed through the port in ...

Cambodia saw a trade deficit of 1.32 billion U.S. dollars in the first six months of this year, according to a Commerce Ministry’s report on Thursday. The country’s total imports and exports were valued at 7.62 billion U.S. dollars during the period, up 20 percent from ...

Bankrupt mobile phone operator Mfone is planning to file a com­plaint with the Phnom Penh Muni­cipal Court against six tele­com­muni­ca­tions firms it says have failed to pay back more than $1 million in outstanding debt to the firm, the court administrator charged with overseeing Mfone’s ...

At a congressional hearing in Washington on Tuesday that scathingly rebuked Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling CPP, a U.S. lawmaker called for legislation to cut American aid to Cambodia following the national election on July 28. Representative Steve Chabot, who chaired the House Subcom­mittee ...

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and South Korea nearly reached the $1 billion dollar realm in 2012, a hike of nearly 100 per cent from the year before, senior officials said yesterday. According to official data from the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, total bilateral trade between ...

Cambodia has seen a sharp rise in the exports of milled rice in the first six months of this year thanks to increasing demand on international markets, an official said Wednesday. The figures, from the single window secretariat for facilitating milled rice exports, showed that the ...

Staff at eight factories producing footwear for Japanese sportswear brand ASICS were trained Tuesday in how to make sure they are not employing child laborers, a company representative said. ASICS corporate staff have been in Cambodia this week in a bid to overcome the negative publicity ...

A $300,000 sum to repair Siem Reap City’s fire-ravaged Doeum Kralanh market, originally billed on Monday as a donation from Prime Minister Hun Sen, will actually be taken from the national budget, according to a senior ruling-party official. Less than three weeks before the July 28 ...

While the country’s tax revenue grew about 20 per cent in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2012, experts say the amount still isn’t high enough to accurately reflect the country’s GDP growth. Stephen Higgins, former CEO of ANZ ...

While exports of Cambodian rice have been booming, analysts are predicting that new competition from Myanmar could eventually rain on the parade. Cambodia exported nearly 176,000 tonnes of rice in the first six months of the year, a 125 per cent increase from the same period ...

Production of Cambodian organic rice is rising rapidly as international demand for the product increases, experts said at a forum for growers and other in­dustry members held Tuesday at the Phnom Penh headquarters of agricultural NGO Cedac. “In the first six months of this year we’ve ...

An infestation of large snails is destroying rice fields in Preah Sihanouk province’s Prey Nop district, raising concerns among farmers that yields from this year’s harvest will be much lower than usual. Eng Samol, Prey Nop district agriculture director, said Tuesday that the snails had already ...

Cambodia attracted 1.79 million foreign visitors in the first five months of the year, up 19 per cent over the previous year. From January to May, Vietnam remains the main source of visitors with 341,000 tourists, up 11 per cent year-on-year, followed by South Korea with ...