Economy and commerce

After a string of false starts, Cambodia’s stock market finally started trading on Wednesday, marking a significant step forward for an impoverished country blighted by corruption and scarred by decades of civil war. But on Wednesday, traders were reaping fast gains as the price of ...

Trading on Cambodia’s stock exchange has begun for the first time after a state-run company completed its initial public offering. Some 13 million shares of the state-run Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority were offered at 6,300 riel ($1.57) per share. The stock exchange was officially launched in ...

In Sihanoukville, just north of Cambodia’s only deep-water port, stands the headquarters of Chenla Seafood. A uniformed guard stands watch at the gate, which opens on to manicured grounds and a two-building facility that houses what will likely become the country’s premier seafood processor. A few ...

A Thai ban on Cambodian corn and other agricultural products led to a 65 per cent year-on-year drop in the Kingdom’s corn exports during the first two months of the year, officials claimed yesterday. January and February exports fell to 2,333 tonnes from 6,694 a year ...

Opposition parliamentarian Mu Sochua has taken aim at Australian mining companies eyeing the Kingdom’s resources, travelling to their home soil to lobby the halls of power. Mu Sochua cited fears that Australian companies awarded exploration concessions in Ratanakkiri and Mondulkiri provinces will treat ethnic minorities there ...

Cambodia’s stock market, which is set to open next week after several delays, may be able to lure five-to-10 initial public offerings a year, according to Korea Exchange Inc., the Cambodian government’s partner in the bourse. State-owned Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) will start trading ...

While shopping for a brand-new television, 27-year-old Loek Bunhai recently bought a Sony flat-screen at the Sunsimexco retail outlet on Phnom Penh’s Monivong Boulevard for $345. But with a monthly salary of $300 from his job as a microfinance officer in Phnom Penh, Mr. Bunhai was ...

Cambodia’s largest bank, Acleda, is looking to get in early on Burma’s economic reawakening with plans to open three microfinance branches in the country as soon as January, the bank’s CEO said yesterday. In Channy said he discussed the plan on Monday with a visiting Burmese ...

PHNOM PENH—In its home country, the Cambodian riel has long played second fiddle to the U.S. dollar—but a new stock exchange and government de-dollarization policies could bolster it in coming years, policy makers and experts say. Dollars change hands with greater frequency than riel in the ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) yesterday revised its prediction for economic growth in Cambodia down to 6.5 percent as it warned that weakening demand from markets in the US and Europe could affect exports leaving the country. The ADB’s biannual outlook report for 2012 also said ...

Cambodian rubber exports declined 3 per cent year-on-year during the first two months of 2012, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. The value of the exports fell by nearly a third. ...

MARUHAN Japan Bank will be the next to join a growing list of Cambodian banks that provide cross-border remittance in Chinese yuan. The move by the Japanese-owned bank is part of a greater push to promote trade with China throughout the region, according to a statement ...

Despite a slow start for milled-rice exports in 2012 brought on by falling regional prices, officials yesterday predicted Cambodian shipments would more than double to 400,000 tonnes this year. Tax exemptions from Europe, which boosted milled-rice exports to about 173,000 tonnes last year, would continue to ...

The volume of goods passing through Phnom Penh Autonomous Port increased by 11 percent in the first three months of 2012 compared to the same period last year, according to statistics released by the port yesterday. Between January and March, 17,386 containers passed through the ...

The government plans to review fuel import taxes in the wake of soaring prices at the pump over the past few weeks, an official said yesterday. Cheam Yeap, Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker and chairman of the finance and banking commission, said the government will look into ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday called on the Thai government to allow border checkpoints to stay open more consistently to increase trade between Thailand and Cambodia. ...

An across-the-board trade and investment deal signed with China’s Yunnan province on Friday was a jump-start to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s pledge a week earlier to double bilateral trade with the Kingdom to US$5 billion by 2017. The package signing, which brought a delegation of 45 ...

A Chinese company from Yunnan province will invest $100 million to build a rice mill and processing plant in Cambodia with a local firm and export 200,000 tons of milled rice to China beginning this year, officials said yesterday. The Yunnan Pan-Asia Agricultural Cooperation and Development ...

Opposition MP Mu Sochua yesterday called for a boycott of global sports brand Nike, following two fainting incidents at a factory that supplies it last week. She also warned that global brands and the Cambodian government were taking a huge gamble by failing to address the ...

An airline in China’s Yunnan province will begin offering flights from its capital, Kunming, to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap City, Council of Ministers spokesman Ek Tha said yesterday. ...

Revenues earned by the Sihanouk Autonomous Port for the first quarter of this year jumped 22 per cent year-on-year to US$8.3 million, according to figures released yesterday by SAP. Exports of the Kingdom’s rice, garments and timber, coupled with imports of textiles, electronics and construction materials, ...

Unless Cambodian exporters find new routes to China, a proposed doubling of bilateral trade to US$5 billion by 2017 would mean little more than increased Chinese goods and investment flooding into the Kingdom. Chinese investments and imports dominated bilateral trade with Cambodia, which was worth about ...

The Ministry of Commerce is setting up a National Confederation for Rice Exporters to achieve Prime Minister Hun Sen’s target of exporting 1 million tons of milled rice by 2015. ...

Maybank will bet on what it said was Cambodia’s low bank-penetration rate for future growth as it transitions from a branch of its Malaysian parent into a locally incorporated subsidiary. With 34 licenced banks operating in a market with US$4.07 billion in loans in 2011, analysts ...