Economy and commerce

Cambodia Airports will invest $100 million next year to expand the size of its airports in Siem Reap City and Phnom Penh and double the number of passengers that can pass through its two main hubs in the country, an official airport operator said yesterday. Emmanuel ...

Loan demands from Cambodia’s banking industry had surged by 31 percent in the last twelve months thanks to the growing business activities in trade, real estate, agriculture and manufacturing, a central bank’s senior official said Tuesday. As of June 2012, the kingdom’s 32 commercial banks had ...

India’s Ambassador Dinesh K. Patnaik pledged Tuesday to urge Indian airlines to operate direct flights to Cambodia in order to boost bilateral relations in trade, investment and tourism. ...

Cambodia and Thailand will open another permanent border crossing between Preah Vihear province and Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani province on Wednesday An Ses, the new permanent border crossing, is primarily used for the trade of agricultural products. Cambodian people usually import products from Thailand through the crossing, ...

Banteay Ampil district, Oddar Meanchey province – The families of Beng commune have new neighbors: a battalion of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) soldiers building a military base inside one of 13 pockets across the province aiming to be the first forest-based carbon trading scheme ...

Cassava plantings in Battambang province dropped more than 18 per cent in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2011, according to agriculture officials. The decease is a result of that previous year’s yield fetching a low price and farmers ...

Cambodia’s trade deficit in the first half of the year grew 34.31 percent compared with the same period in 2011, reaching $1.36 billion, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce. Though revenues earned from exports grew 12.13 percent to about $2.50 billion, a growing ...

Increased labour strife in the garment sector and slumping Western economies contributed to a slow-down in Cambodia’s exports during the first six months of the year, with total growth dropping by about 74 per cent year on year. Exports rose, to US$2.5 billion, up 12 per ...

Before the big dinner with Hillary Clinton, Prime Minister Hun Sen and the leaders of Thailand and Myanmar on July 13 in Siem Reap, Tom Whitcraft of RMA Group, which owns the Ford dealership in Cambodia, sat down for an interview. Whitcraft said Ford has about ...

The biggest US trade delegation to Cambodia in decades joined Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here as the two countries look to expand their economic relationship beyond exports of cheaply produced garments. “On the economic front, there is much more room for us to grow ...

Oil imports to Cambodia in the first half of the year increased 22 percent to nearly 1 million tons compared to the same period last year, according to figures obtained yesterday from the Ministry of Commerce. According to the data, Cambodia imported 922,860 tons of gas ...

Hattha Kaksekar Ltd, a local microfinance institution, has invested almost US$2 million in a new ATM network, the company announced yesterday. Hattha Kaksekar now has around $32 million in deposits and will become the first financial institution to use SmartVista, an automated ATM process which also ...

The Phnom Penh Municipality has begun construction work on a road skirting the area formerly taken up by the Boeng Kak lake, according to a statement posted on the city’s website. On Monday, the municipality held an inauguration ceremony for construction of a 615-meter concrete road ...

The World Bank has blacklisted an arm of the company that carried out a much-criticised study into the Xayaburi hydro dam project, it has confirmed. According to the bank’s website, Pöyry Management Consulting Oy Finland has been banned from conducting business with the bank for three ...

Hattha Kaksekar Limited, one of the country’s largest microfinance institutions (MFIs), is in talks to become a commercial bank by 2014, an official at the micro-lender said yesterday. The move, if successful, will be in line with the Central Bank’s policy to support MFIs in diversifying ...

The number of agricultural tractors and power-trailers imported to Cambodia through the Poipet International Checkpoint in Banteay Meanchey province has decreased by 72 percent in the first six months of the year, compared to the same period last year, the provincial commerce department said. Thong Thyna, ...

The ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference (PMC) 10 + 1 Session with 10 ASEAN’s Dialogue Partners, namely, Australia, Canada, China, the European Union (EU), India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America were held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on 11 July 2012. They focused on cooperation ...

Cambodia will push to finalise a rice-exporting bloc with four other regional countries by the end of the year in a bid to become the world’s “food basket”, according to the Ministry of Commerce. The group of countries including Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar – ...

The number of visitors to Cambodia through its two main airports increased 19.7 percent to more than 1 million people in the first half of the year, compared to the same period last year, figures released by Cambodia Airports show. Between January and June, 1,028,285 passengers ...

Japanese companies are facing a shortage of skilled workers which is hindering progress in Japanese-owned electronic factories, the Japanese Business Association of Cambodia (JBAC) said. The statement comes after the Asian Development Bank said in April that a shortage of skilled workers would continue to hinder ...

Two financing agreements, implemented by the French Development Agency, were signed on 12 July 2012 at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, in the presence of the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economy and Finance, H.E.M. Keat Chhon, to support two key sectors for economic and rural development of Cambodia. A financing agreement of 800,000 Euros (1 ...

Cambodia’s waterways go largely unused for domestic shipping, a factor hurting the competitveness of the country’s logistics and agriculture sectors, experts said yesterday. Cambodia lost ground this year in a measure of logistics performance. As rice millers and exporters push toward the 1 million-tonne rice goal ...

Slumping garment exports led yesterday to an official downgrade for Cambodian’s growth outlook this year – albeit a slight one. Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon projected 6.9 per cent year-on-year gross domestic product growth for 2012, down a tenth of a percentage point from ...

After the Philippines government issued their own policy regarding milled rice exports the Ministry of Commerce of Cambodia has expressed its disinterest in exporting milled rice to its neighbour, Cambodia’s Commerce Minister said yesterday. Local rice millers will not be encouraged to make any efforts to ...