Agriculture and fishing

Nautisco Seafood Manufacturing Inc, a Canadian-Cambodian shrimp producer in Preah Sihanouk province, has accused the private equity fund Leopard Capital, one of its shareholders, of draining the company of its finances. In a statement released Friday, Nautisco said that Phnom Penh Municipal Court had ordered the ...

The US government is working with a Cambodian microfinance institution to finance $2.7million in loans to farmers and small- and medium-sized agro-businesses in Battambang, Kompong Thom, Pursat and Siem Reap provinces in order to improve their access to credit, the US Embassy said. USAid will work ...

Cambodia’s gross domestic product grew 6.9 per cent year-on-year in 2011, and is set to increase to 6.5 per cent this year, according to preliminary projections from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Agriculture, which was hit hard by floods last year, climbed 3.3 per cent, ...

Dry-season rice farmers in some areas west of the Tonle Sap River and in eastern provinces are appealing to the government for help as the reservoirs they rely on for irrigation are drying up faster than usual, farmers and officials said yesterday. Officials at the ministries ...

More than 300 villagers from two districts in Kampong Speu province joined forces yesterday to protest in front of the provincial court over two land disputes, vowing to continue until authorities resolved them and released a mother of seven jailed last month after she had ...

Human rights group Licadho raised the alarm yesterday over the increased use of armed force by authorities as they seek to suppress protests over Cambodia’s numerous land disputes. It noted that during the past two months, security forces have opened fire on villagers during three ...

Despite a 67 per cent drop in food imports to Cambodia in 2011, inflation in exporting countries drove an 18 per cent rise in the total value of the imports. Food imports fell from 769,993 tonnes in 2010 to 254,080 in 2011, while the total value ...

Some commercial banks could increase loans to the agricultural sector this year, according to industry insiders who cited improvements in the sector and a rise in crop prices. Cambodian farmers lack the capital needed for inputs such as seeds and fertiliser, while domestic rice millers often ...

An 11-year-old HIV-positive girl evicted from Borei Keila moved back to Phnom Penh to live with her aunt because she had no access to medication at her relocation site in Kandal province, she said yesterday. During another day of protests outside the National Assembly, schoolgirl Theng ...

Pig prices in Cambodia have fallen by 18 percent in the past three months due to a massive oversupply of pork in the country, an official at the Cambodian Pig Raisers Association said yesterday. The reason for the oversupply is twofold: Thailand increased its pig exports ...

Dramatic new video footage of the January 18 Kratie province land dispute shooting has been released on the internet, depicting TTY rubber company security guards opening fire on a crowd of unarmed villagers. The 48-second video, recorded by a villager on a mobile phone and uploaded ...

Plans for a 5,000-hectare banana farming project in Koh Kong province, proposed last year by an Australian and a Japanese company, look set to go ahead, with state news agency Agence Kampuchea Presse (AKP) yesterday reporting that the project would cost $50 million. Last Friday, the ...

More than 300 demonstrators yesterday marked the third anniversary of the forced eviction of Phnom Penh’s Dey Krahorm community, one of the city’s most violent land evictions. Five international rights groups also sent a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen urging the government to stop land ...

Some of Cambodia’s biggest exporters have experienced a sizeable decline in milled-rice shipments this month, with one insider putting the number as high as 40 per cent year-on-year. The waning figure stands in stark contrast to last year’s milled-rice export numbers, which increased about 22 per ...

A deadly land dispute in Pursat province ended over the weekend with a victory for the villagers, but they said yesterday this might have more to do with the upcoming commune elections than a change of heart within the company owned by the wife of ...

The director of TTY rubber company, whose guards shot four land protestors in Kratie province last week, said he will give land back to the protesting villagers, backtracking on his vow Friday not to give up any of the land granted to him by the ...

Cambodia’s 2011 rubber exports and export prices grew by 5.5 per cent and 131 per cent respectively, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce obtained by the Post. The data shows rubber exports last year totalled 46,727 tonnes, compared to 30,040 tonnes in 2010. Export ...

Villagers from Kratie province, who blocked National Road 76a last week after four of their own were shot by guards working for agro-development firm TTY, appear to be on their way to receiving farmland they lost to the company in an economic land concession. A statement ...

Strong growth in garment, textile, and agricultural exports drove a 42.7 per cent increase in Cambodia’s total exports for 2011, official Ministry of Commerce data shows. The Kingdom exported $4.98 billion in goods last year, compared with $3.49 billion the year before. Market diversification and a relaxing ...

The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday that it plans to raise its annual production of organic vegetables from 120 tons to 600 tons by the end of 2015. Lim Sokun Darun, program coordinator at Cedac, said that the decision to ...

The government said yesterday that a gold mine in Kompong Cham province that has damaged about 1 square km of land with chemical waste would cost at least $4 million to clean up. Speaking at a workshop in Phnom Penh on revenue transparency, Sim Sisokhaly, director ...

The number of criminal charges meted out to villagers embroiled in land disputes rose by more than 50 percent in 2011 compared to the previous year, according to figures released by the rights group Adhoc yesterday. The rights group found that the courts charged 475 villagers ...

Violence erupted yesterday in Kratie province’s Snuol district where six people were shot and injured when RCAF soldiers working for a rubber company opened fire on a crowd of villagers who were trying to stop the company from clearing land in the area, police and ...

More than 11,000 families were affected by government-granted economic land concessions in 2011, nearly 3,000 more families than were affected the previous year, according to figures released yesterday by local rights group Licadho. A total of more than 2 million hectares of the country’s forests and ...