Ministries and other national bodies

Military Police officials apprehended two suspects in Takeo province’s Angkor Borei district on Monday for attempting to transport around 1 tonne of wildlife, including turtles, birds and rare snakes, to Vietnam. ...

With trade and investment between Cambodia and China steadily increasing, Chinese currency-backed settlements for cross-border commerce have sharply taken off as the Kingdom continues to deepen its economic dependency on the northern giant, a central bank official said yesterday. ...

In the latest attempt to push its narrative of an impending “colour revolution”, the Press and Quick Reaction Unit released a sweeping, nearly hourlong video, broadcast on multiple television stations on Monday night, attempting to link the opposition’s activities to protest movements in the Middle ...

Defence Minister General Tea Banh yesterday told Asean member states and eight other countries how the recent government crackdown on media outlets and NGOs was legal and justified. ...

The Environment Ministry is to request the creation of six new protected areas to safeguard biodiversity and boost conservation in the country. Tim Sitha, deputy director of the general department of conservation, said the ministry has been studying the potential to establish the new areas.  ...

The government had reclassified four economic land concessions as state property, reclaiming almost 20,000 hectares earlier handed to private firms to use for rubber plantations. ...

The central bank officially held a soft launch last Friday for its central shared switch mechanism, which connects account records of three of the Kingdom’s leading financial institutions, allowing them to operate ATM and point-of-sale (POS) terminals in tandem. ...

Villagers and NGOs have accused local authorities, including forestry and environmental officials, of accepting bribes from illegal loggers in exchange for unfettered logging expeditions in Preah Vihear province’s Preah Roka protected forest. ...

Nearly 3,000 cases have been detected in a crackdown on fisheries and forest crime in the first nine months of this year.​ The results were in a Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery report published on Friday. ...

The Ministry of Environment is asking Japan for help mapping Cambodia’s forests using satellite imagery, one week after it vehemently refuted a report of such imagery showing accelerating forest loss in the Kingdom. ...

A senior Ministry of Defence official yesterday claimed that housing rights group Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT) had received close to half a million dollars a year from the United States to foment “colour revolution” among the land dispute groups it worked with – a claim ...

Workers from the Pou Yuen Cambodia garment factory in Sen Sok district yesterday protested outside the premises after the management decided to offer them only three-month contract extensions. ...

A new agriculture scholarship and research grant were launched yesterday with the aim of nurturing local expertise by providing students opportunities to pursue graduate degrees and conduct research. ...

Anticipating popular unrest surrounding the “treason” trial of opposition leader Kem Sokha, Minister of Interior Sar Kheng on Friday instructed provincial governors, police chiefs and officers to block people from travelling to the capital and to prevent any attempts at demonstrations. ...

The Ministry of Environment released a statement late Tuesday night vehemently refuting University of Maryland data that showed a 30 percent spike in forest cover loss in 2016 over the year before, pointing instead to its own data showing only minimal deforestation over the same ...

Six month after announcing its intentions to invest in local silk production, a Japanese beauty company, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, has released a new study on silkworms and their potential for the cosmetics industry, paving the way for more concrete action to ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has ordered the Health Ministry to investigate the well-being of villagers living within the vicinity of an estimated 15 chemical bomb sites in Svay Rieng province’s Korki commune. ...

Provinces nationwide – particularly those along the Cambodia-Thailand border – are likely to experience more flooding as a result of a low-pressure system that is expected to bring rain across the country, according to a forecast from the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology. ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng yesterday announced he has formed an assessment group – with representation from the ministry’s identification and immigration departments as well as the Ministry of Labour – to study the issues affecting Cambodian migrant workers and provide recommendations to fix them. ...

An inter-ministerial joint working group yesterday said it would continue its work on resolving land disputes for 540 families battling sugarcane companies in four provinces. ...

The Interior Ministry has instructed provincial officials to urgently report any instances in which activities are carried out by any NGOs or grassroots associations without prior notification, adding that authorities can stop any planned events if they affect “public order and national security”. ...

More than 200 families who have been locked in land disputes with sugar firms will have at least some of their land returned to them after the Ministry of Land Management approved their claims yesterday, though hundreds more families are still waiting for resolution. ...

A government prakas that requires all businesses to post prices of their goods and services in the local riel currency has had little impact on pricing practices, with the vast majority of businesses in Cambodia continuing to quote prices in US dollars and authorities showing ...

A $20 million Ministry of Agriculture programme has struggled to meet its goal of introducing 160 tonnes a day of high-quality locally produced vegetables to the market, with ministry officials saying that as a result of high production costs and pricing issues it was currently ...