Economy and commerce

Prime Minister Hun Sen will travel to China on Saturday to meet with the rising superpower’s new leadership, in a trip the government expects to yield nearly $2 billion in loans and aid. Most significantly, the Government is hoping to secure Chinese funding for a 1.67 ...

Construction began yesterday on a bridge crossing an upstream section of the Vam Co Dong River that borders Cambodia. The US $2.2-million friendship bridge will link the southern province of Tay Ninh with Cambodia’s Prey Veng Province at the Tan Nam – Mean Chay border gate ...

The Prime Minister appealed Wednesday to Australian investors to increase their investments in Cambodia, especially in the agriculture and the tourism sectors. The comments were made during a meeting with the outgoing Australian Ambassador to Cambodia, Penny Richards, at the Peace Palace. He said, because of ...

The National Assembly’s Commission on Economy on Wednesday rejected the opposition- proposed draft law on minimum wages for garment and state workers. The opposition group proposed the National Assembly to make a law to limit a monthly minimum wage of 150 U.S. dollars for garment ...

Acleda Bank PLC plans to launch internet banking services in September, the bank’s president and CEO, In Channy, said yesterday. Internet banking will be available to customers in Cambodia and abroad, Mr. Channy said. The system Acleda chose, he said, is used by many leading ...

Officials from the Stung Treng provincial forestry administration have warned a local SRP commune chief against speaking to the media about the clearing of trees from a 36,000-hectare site to become the reservoir of a giant hydropower dam in the area, the commune chief said ...

Cambodia Airlines, a majority-owned Cambodian company, and San Miguel Corp., the Philippines’ most diversified conglomerate, on Tuesday signed a joint venture agreement to set up a Cambodia-based airline – Cambodia Airlines – to service domestic and regional flights. The agreement was inked between Cambodian tycoon Kith ...

Cambodia and Russia on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding, aiming at promoting bilateral cooperation in all fields, particularly trade, investment, tourism and education, officials said. The deal was inked between Sun Saphoeun, secretary of state of Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and ...

Hun Sen said salaries for civil servants and garment workers will increase yearly coinciding with the growth in the economy. Speaking at a graduation ceremony for the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) at the Koh Pich center on Tuesday, he said during the general assembly ...

The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) will call an e-auction on April 10 on work to renovate damaged tracks connecting Thailand with Cambodia at the Aranyaprathet-Poipet crossing, Transport Minister Chadchat Suttipan said on Tuesday. The railway agency estimated the project will cost 2.8 billion baht. ...

The water shortage that has led to tens of thousands of households in Sihanoukville without running water for the past week occurred after provincial officials decided to limit power to a water pumping facility operated by the tourist town’s privately-owned distributor, a manager at the ...

Mondolkiri and Kompong Thom provinces could suffer some of the most extreme effects of climate change in the Lower Mekong Basin region, such as a high incidence of flash floods and droughts by 2050, according to a new study. Analyzing temperature and rainfall from 84 provinces ...

A Malaysian-base[d] energy service group has plans to spend roughly $10 million to build a biomass power plant in Cambodia. Wah Seong Corporation Berhad’s plant would have a production capacity of up to 10 megawatts, said the group’s chief executive, Chan Cheu Leong, in an article ...

Althought the initial book value – purchase cost minus depreciation – of the assets of bankrupt Cambodian telecommunications firm Mfone was estimated at $105 million, employee representatives claim the estimated market value is closer to $30 million to $40 million. Bou Kunthea, an Mfone employee representative, ...

Asia and the Pacific continued as a hot spot for international tourism in 2012, attracting what is expected to be in excess of 350 million international visitor arrivals, expanding its collective inbound count by more than 5% and generating more than 18 million additional foreign visits, year-on-year. Within this ...

2012 has been an impressive year for Cambodia’s economic resilience. Among the many sectors that had positively grown are the construction and property development [sic] and they are expected to be among the highest growth achievers in the current year as well. In 2012, the ...

The Can Tho city and Cambodian province of Battambang have signed a memorandum of understanding on economic co-operation that covers commerce, investment, and tourism. The two sides will create favourable conditions for businesses from the two localities to co-operate in areas like processing of farm produce, ...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has raised its forecast of global paddy production in 2012 by about 1.5 million tonnes to 730 million tonnes (487 million tonnes, milled). The scaling up of production mainly concerned Asian countries, in particular Cambodia, ...

Cambodia’s financial system appears to be shifting to excessive credit growth. The credit-to-GDP ratio has reached 37 percent, well above the low-income economies (LTCs). If credit growth were to continue at the current pace, by mid-2013 the ratio would exceed even the median for more ...

Cambodia could see less preferential economic treatment by Europe in coming years, as it graduates as a more developed country, the EU’s ambassador to Cambodia says. In an interview with VOA Khmer in Phnom Penh, Ambassador Jean-Francois Cautain said Cambodia currently enjoys tariff exemptions under a ...

Workers in Stung Treng province have begun clearing forested land with chainsaws in order to make way for the reservoir of a massive hydropower dam that has drawn ire from local villagers who say they have not been informed about the dam’s construction plans. The National ...

Khmer Brewery, the maker of Cambodia Beer, plans to begin sales to France, the company’s third export market, this month, having tasted success in Japan and Malaysia. It is one of six breweries in the Kingdom, but the only one whose investor base is local. With ...

A water shortage in the tourist town of Sihanoukville has led authorities to advise scores of businesses to dig their own wells as only 50 percent of local demand is currently being met after high temperatures dried up the water supplier’s only reservoir. On March ...

Climate change will have a significant effect on major industrial and food crops in the Lower Mekong basin countries of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, says a new study. The study, conducted by the Mekong Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change Project for the U.S. Agency ...