Agriculture and fishing

Cambodia could attract an increasing number of Malaysian investors interested in food production and global export if moves to create a halal food recognition body were implemented, Malaysian ambassador Mond Tahir Nasruddin said yesterday. Officials were working together to establish the halal food product recognition ...

An abundance of illegal crocodile smugglers operating without a license and exporting animals to Vietnam has led to the price of crocodiles dropping by more than half compared to the same period last year, breeders said yesterday. Loun Nam, president of the Crocodile Feeder Association, ...

The World Bank has denied a report that it is preparing to fund a new education project in Cambodia, 10 months after the bank froze all new lending to Cambodia to protest evictions and Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake. In The, an undersecretary of state ...

Forestry Administration officials have confiscated 15 cubic meters of luxury-grade wood from a truck belonging to hotel and casino magnate Try Pheap in Kompong Thom province. Soth Mary, a division director for the Forestry Administration in the province, said yesterday that his staff stopped a truck ...

The privatization of state-owned land continued last month with several large government- owned plots in Phnom Penh transferred to state-private property, according to a sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen. According to the document signed May 24, the state-owned properties, measuring 40,998 square meters in ...

Despite authorities turning a blind eye to their villages for more than 15 years, about 2,000 families living near Preah Sihanouk province’s Kbal Chhay waterfall face imminent eviction to make way for a clean-water processing plant, officials said yesterday. Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recent bold move ...

The Phnom Penh municipal authority has called on Borei Keila residents evicted on January 3 to present official documents proving they are eligible for housing. City Hall’s request came as part of a statement criticising NGOs and political parties that encouraged “poor” residents, who were not ...

Samdech Prime Minister Hun Sen on June 14 ordered line ministries to distribute land to landless and real poor people to contribute to strengthening social equity system in the kingdom. “Landless and real poor people will get a plot of land with land titles according to the obvious situation,” Premier said in the launching ceremony ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has given approval to grant state-owned land to three private companies despite issuing a temporary ban on land concessions, drawing criticism from local NGOs concerned about increasingly frequent land disputes in the country. Copies of three subdecrees obtained by RFA showed ...

Less than a week after Prime Minister Hun Sen called for land to be returned to villagers embroiled in land disputes, a Pursat province villager has been summonsed by the court in a scenario many see as all too common in these disputes. Kuch Veng, a ...

The State Department on Tuesday cited abuses in Thailand’s huge fishing industry as part of an annual worldwide report on Trafficking in Persons. The report noted that men from Cambodia and Myanmar, also known as Burma, are trafficked aboard Thai ships and forced to work ...

Hundreds of people have ordered video compact discs (VCDs) of Thursday’s speech on land rights given by Prime Minister Hun Sen after an official at CTN offered on-air yesterday to send a copy to anyone who requested it Orders of the speech have been pouring in ...

Women’s economic roles in Cambodia have made slower progress than in many other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, World Bank economists said yesterday. The region as a whole has seen tremendous gains in the way of gender equality during the past 20 years, but increasing wages ...

More than 100 villagers from Svay Rieng province’s Romeas Hek district protested yesterday on land they say was stolen from them in 2007 and recently cleared by a former community representative, whose uncle is a local commune chief Villagers said lang Hai, who acted as ...

Commune and village officials in Kratie province yesterday threatened to shut down a community meeting on the protection of Prey Long forest because the organizers had failed to get permission and allegedly invited only opposition party activists. The authorities eventually allowed the meeting to proceed, after ...

High production costs and a lack of government assistance is keeping rice farmers near the poverty line despite unprecedented growth in the sector, according to a new study released by local microfinance institution Intean Poalroath Rongroeurng (IPR). The independent study, conducted by two Cambodian researchers ...

Stevia Nutra Corporation, a Canadian agro-business company, has announced its decision to grow stevia in Cambodia’s Kampong Speu province. The company will grow the plant, whose leaves are used as a sweetener or sugar substitute, on just over 20 hectares of land close to Phnom Penh. Stevia Nutra has incorporated Mighty MekongAgro Industries Co. Ltd, ...

The growth prospects of the Cambodian economy in 2012 remain moderate, as has been expected. Cambodia’s real Gross Domestic Product (GOP) is estimated to grow at a rate of 6.2 percent year-on-year, which is unchanged from our estimation at the beginning of this year. Persistently weaker demand in the European and US markets remain the ...

While the Kingdom’s biggest industrial pig farming company is seeing steady growth as the nation’s population and hunger for pork grows, small pig farmers are having a hard time of it in the face of fluctuating prices and lower cost imports from Thailand, according to experts and insiders who came to a recent ...

More than 200 people in Cambodia’s eastern Svay Rieng province were hospitalized after eating imported vegetables from Vietnam that were not properly washed or cooked, the French-based Pasteur Institute of Cambodia has confirmed after running tests. The case has highlighted an already acknowledged need for more domestic vegetable production and less dependency on imported produce. The ...

Report from tourism ministry said: in 2011, it gained 2.8 million tourist arrivals and harvested for 1.9 billion US dollars. For fourth months of 2012, we received over 1, 272,514 foreign tourists, an increase of over 27 percent if comparing the same period of last year. Tourism industry offered direct jobs of 350,000. Ministry urged to ...

The government on Friday denied it had violated a moratorium on granting new land concessions when Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on more than 20,000 hectares of land to three rubber companies 11 days after the ban was announced on May 7. According to documents ...

Shukaku, a company owned by a CPP Senator was given a 99-year lease to to the area in 2007.  Immediately, the company started filling in the lake with sand and began kicking out thousands of families in what is one of the most notorious evictions ...

According to documents published in the latest Royal Gazette, Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on three land concessions covering more than 20,000 hectares last month, 11 days after a moratorium on the granting of such concessions was announced. On May 7, Mr. Hun Sen signed ...