Economy and commerce

Revenue at Sihanoukville Autonomous Port increased 13.6 per cent year on year between January and June, port officials confirmed yesterday. As the state-owned enterprise gears up for listing on the Cambodia Securities Exchange, the neighbouring Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone will play an increasingly important role in ...

Prudential Corporation Asia yesterday received “in-principle” approval from the Ministry of Economy and Finance to establish a foreign-owned life insurance operation in the country, an official statement from the company said. The announcement comes after Canadian life insurance giant Manulife on Thursday made public plans for ...

Europe’s largest manufacturer of two-wheeled vehicles, Italy’s Piaggio, will return to Cambodia in September, being absent since the Khmer Rouge takeover. Vespa Cambodia Co Ltd, part of Narith Long’s Narita group, signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Piaggio last month to distribute its Piaggio scooters, ...

Renaissance Minerals Limited listed in ASX (Australian stock exchange under code: RNS) on June 26 announced the results of its first three drill holes from its inaugural diamond drilling program at the highly prospective Okvau Gold Deposit in Cambodia. An existing independent JORC-compliant indicated and inferred resource estimate has already been defined at the Okvau ...

Cambodia offers plenty of opportunities for Vietnamese exporters although there is intense competition from countries such as Thailand and China, delegates said at a conference in HCM City last Thursday. Le Quoc Phong, general director of the Binh Dien Fertiliser Group, said the Cambodian market had ...

Oil production in Cambodia may not begin until 2016, or at least three years after the originally appointed date, Chevron officials reportedly said at a Ministry of Environment meeting on Friday. Government officials yesterday confirmed the feasibility of the time frame. If Chevron Overseas Petroleum Cambodia gained ...

Inside a nondescript villa in central Phnom Penh, men and women in white lab coats peer through lenses, carefully studying the magnified objects in front of them. But these aren’t biologists researching cell division or bacteria; these are gem testers concerned with inclusions and refractive indices on rubies, sapphires and other precious stones. They are working ...

Property development firm Hongkong Land (HKL) will not break ground on a 10,700-square-meter mixed-use office and retail project in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district until at least 2013, officials at the firm said Thursday. HKL acquired the property behind the U.S. Embassy in April 2011 as ...

An increasing number of boutique hotels are appearing in Cambodia and attracting foreign investment, insiders say, including a US$2 million investment in the Governor’s House, a newly opened, 10-room boutique hotel in Phnom Penh. The number of boutique hotels in Cambodia has increased rapidly, particularly in ...

In 2011, the actual amount of domestic revenue collected during the year did not reach the set target, while actual budget expenditure exceeded the planned amount. As a result, the overall budget deficit grew to 7-3 percent of GDP in 2011. For 2012 and 2013, while the execution of ...

Cambodia’s tourism minister Thong Khon said this week that ASEAN is protected to gain around 107 million international tourists in 2015 as the bloc will create the community that year. Speaking at closing ceremony of the 10th Tour Guide Training and the Opening of 11th Tour Guide Training for Phnom Penh city at ...

Manulife, one of the world’s leading life insurance companies, now opened its office in Cambodia after seeing that growth of midlle class of total population. Manulife financial corporation was based in Canada. Manulife Financial on June 28 announced the official opening of its head office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and its ceremony was presided over by H.E. ...

Two foreign-owned garment manufacturers will submit disclosure documents to Cambodia’s capital market regulator next month, the companies’ underwriter Phnom Penh Securities Firm Plc. said yesterday. The initial public offerings for the two private companies, expected by the end of the year, should boost action on the ...

Officials and securities firms yesterday showed little distress at the imminent retirement of Ek Sonn Chan, the man credited with straightening out and preparing the capital’s public water utility for its initial public offering in April. A letter from the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy ...

Manulife Financial Corp, Canada’s largest life insurer, has set up shop in Cambodia, hoping to tap into an emerging middle class in the southeast Asian country. The move is part of the Toronto-based company’s strategy of targeting profit growth in Asia as part of its plan ...

Manulife Financial Corp. (MFC), Canada’s largest insurer, has opened an office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, its first in the Southeast Asian nation. Manulife has about 40 people in its Cambodian unit, the Toronto-based insurer said today in a statement. ...

Keo Kounila is Cambodian blogger who recently attend the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany. After meeting amid some 1,500 participants, she told VOA Khmer she had garnered new ideas to help develop Cambodia, including organizing seminars to help university students make better use ...

Forestry Administration officials have seized equipment valued at $1.5 million from a Banteay Meanchey province biofuel plantation, which is being investigated for fraud in the UK, company and forestry officials said yesterday. Sustainable Agro Energy’s assets were frozen in February and investigators at the U.K.’s ...

Officials and experts yesterday questioned the likelihood of Cambodia and Vietnam’s proposal to hike bilateral trade by more than US$2.5 billion by 2015. The pledge of $5 billion in total trade, made by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Tan Dung, last ...

U.S. fast-food chain Burger King said yesterday that no one holds the rights to open a branch of its restaurant in Cambodia, despite job advertisements appearing online featuring the company’s logo. . “Currently, we do not have any established franchisee in Cambodia,” Tan Ching Ee, marketing ...

Property prices in both in Phnom Penh and the surrounding suburbs have increased around 10 percent in the first half of 2012 as more foreign investors buy up new condominiums and banks provide more housing loans, say real estate experts. After years of flat prices due to weak demand in the wake of ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday implicated Mam Sonando, owner of the independent Beehive Radio station, in an alleged secessionist movement in Kratie province and announced the government’s intentions to arrest him. “Now, we compete with the ringleader of the Democrats Association, which created the state ...

A large majority of Cambodian small and medium-sized enterprises are operating without conducting good market research, say experts in the field, and relying too heavily on informal information and networks. As a result, they are growing slowly and in some cases, falling behind their competitors. Market research involves gathering information about markets and customers. Laurent Notin, ...

An official at the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port yesterday said the state-owned firm would miss its target of registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC) next month, a key step before listing on the country’s nascent bourse. Ho Hongsik, director of SBI Royal ...