Government

As the government plans to transfer roughly 60 percent of detainees at the notorious Prey Speu detention center to a “mental illness” center in Kandal province, mental health experts expressed doubts this week over the country’s capacity to provide proper care. ...

A group of 16 Montagnard asylum-seekers who fled to Cambodia from Vietnam over the past two years returned to their home country on Tuesday after failing to secure refugee status in Phnom Penh, an Interior Ministry official said on Wednesday. ...

A United Nations peacekeeper from Cambodia was injured in gunfire on Sunday in Juba, South Sudan, according to the Cambodian National Center of Peacekeeping Forces. ...

The Ministry of Interior and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC) issued a joint release yesterday announcing that investigations of Empire Big Capital Ltd (EBC) and related firms AIF and ICA showed the companies had engaged in investment fraud.     ...

An archaeological dig at the ancient capital of Angkor Thom started on Monday in search of metal tools from the Kingdom’s Angkorian era. The École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), a French institute dedicated to the study of Asian societies, started the dig in cooperation with the ...

Cambodia’s tax department collected $829 million in tax revenue during the first half of the year, 18 per cent more than during the same period a year earlier, led by surge in profit-tax revenue, according to government data released late on Tuesday.    ...

Revenue collected by the customs and excise department jumped nearly 20 per cent during the first six months of the year, compared with the same period a year earlier, figures released yesterday show. ...

The National Election Committee yesterday released a monthly meeting schedule with the European and Japanese embassies in a bid to ensure the voter-registration process, due to begin September 1, will go smoothly.   ...

Upgrades to National Road 1 are expected to be completed by March 2017, according to the Ministry of Public Works and Transport. ...

The Ministry of Commerce yesterday announced it was lowering the price ceiling on gasoline sold at retail petrol stations across the Kingdom between July 12 and 21 after the latest scheduled recalculation of fuel caps.   ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen will leave for Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia this week for the two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit starting on July 15. ...

Two ethnic minority rights groups have filed a letter to the Interior Ministry urging it to push commune and provincial officials to create identification cards for Khmer Krom citizens, many of whom have been denied the service. ...

Cambodia is committed to complete construction of the 6.5-kilometer cross-border railway linking Poipet city in Banteay Meanchey province to neighboring Thailand’s Sisophon province by the year’s end. ...

The Thailand government will consider tapping into 50 emerging cities, including those in Cambodia, for investment opportunities based on information provided by Japan External Trade Organization (Jetro), according to the Bangkok Post. ...

After a mass escape of 70 inmates from the notorious Prey Speu centre on Sunday, the government said they would take mentally ill people rounded up off the streets and house them on the same site as a Kandal orphanage.   ...

The Finance Ministry has rescheduled a trio of timber auctions that had been set to start today after a continued lack of interest from buyers, although bidding for a lot in Stung Treng province will go ahead on Wednesday as planned.   ...

Cambodia needs $5.23 billion for 519 development projects in the ongoing three-year public investment program (PIP) that was approved by the Council of Ministers on Friday, according to a government media release. ...

Cambodian rice exports decreased nearly 6 per cent year-on-year during the first semester, reinforcing concerns about the future of the rice industry, the Kingdom’s most important agricultural sector.   ...

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday issued a statement reiterating government policy laid out expressly by Prime Minister Hun Sen in recent speeches, saying Cambodia will not support Tuesday’s expected arbitration decision at the Hague in the South China Sea territorial dispute between China ...

The use of mobile weighing stations to combat overloaded transport trucks will be extended next month to factories, warehouses, quarries, construction sites and other sources of heavy shipments, the Transport Ministry has announced.   ...

Nearly 1,000 people have died in traffic accidents in the first six months of 2016 according to a National Committee for Road Safety report released today. ...

The commerce minister has once again called on Thailand to consider giving access to Cambodian agricultural products to transit to the Thai port of Laem Chabang before being exported to a third country. The minister also called for a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to be signed ...

Rice exports fell almost 6 percent during the first half of the year, to 268,190 tons, according to government figures—despite the industry’s repeated calls for help to prevent such a decline.   ...

About 20 tons of expired food products seized by police in March were set ablaze yesterday, according to the Ministry of Interior. ...