Agriculture

Cambodian-owned TTY corporation will invest US$6 million in a rice milling plant in Kampong Speu province, company officials said yesterday. Heng Sarath, TTY deputy director, said the factory would be built on national road 6, and would mill 20 tonnes of rice per year. Construction is ...

Security forces in Cambodia have shot dead a 15-year-old girl who was taking part in a land protest. She was demonstrating against the development of a rubber plantation on farmland in eastern Kratie province. Authorities say local residents, armed with axes and crossbows, would not vacate the ...

Villagers in Kompong Chnang province have resorted to black magic as a means to even the odds with a long-running land dispute with a powerful company, KDC Development, holding a spell-casing ceremony on Saturday to curse the firm and the provincial court for allegedly colluding ...

A nearly year-long land dispute in Oddar Meanchey has been resolved for most parties involved by the intervention of two RCAF generals, but critics contend the more than 2,400 hectare-giveaway is a ploy to influence upcoming elections. Generals Kun Kim and Chea Tara yesterday granted 1.5 ...

Security forces shot and killed a 15-year-old girl on Wednesday during a clash with about 200 villagers armed with axes and crossbows in eastern Cambodia, in the latest of several violent evictions aimed at clearing land for development. ...

Companies that have seized land, confiscated livestock and destroyed homes and property have gone unpunished, the UN special rapporteur for Cambodia has said. Surya Subedi, professor of international law at Leeds University, said all the communities he had met raised the issue of misconduct by ...

Srey ambel district, Koh Kong province – A roadblock by locals in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat petered out after several hours in the dying rain on Saturday without the protesters winning any concessions from either the senator’s firm or ...

TTY director-general Na Marady, a well-known Cambodian tycoon, has been accused of owing money to farmers from whom he bought potatoes on credit more than a year ago in Memot district’s Koki and Kompoan communes in Kampong Cham province. The villagers complained on Friday that Na ...

U.N. human rights envoy to Cambodia Surya Subedi wrapped up his seventh mission to Cambodia on Friday, saying that his own assessments of land concessions confirmed that they are being unfairly granted and leaving many communities out in the cold. Mr. Subedi said that meetings held ...

Economic growth in Cambodia is estimated to reach 6.7 percent this year, a 0.2 percent drop compared with 2011, the U.N. said in a report released on Friday, citing a modest slowdown in exports from Cambodia to the U.S. and Europe. In its Economic and Social ...

The Philippines may decide to choose Cambodia to supply some of the rice it needs to boost its buffer stocks, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said on Friday. Alcala said the government still has to buy 120,000 metric tons of rice to fill the 500,000 metric tons ...

More than 600 people, including 50 Buddhist monks, who have been affected by illegal logging across the country arrived in Koh Kong province yesterday ahead of a memorial service to be held today at the site where well-known forestry activist Chut Wutty was shot dead ...

As the rainy season approaches, Cedac, a Cambodian agricultural organisation, is appealing to farmers this week to increase their rice yields, according to a Cedac report directed toward growers. The report established a six-step order of operations that would ensure increased output during the most intense growing ...

Surya Subedi, the UN’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, expressed concern Friday over land concessions provided to private companies that are forcing people from their land in the provinces. “the royal government has the primary responsibility for respecting, protecting and fulfilling the rights of its ...

Ministry officials were silent yesterday on how exactly they planned to implement Prime Minister Hun Sen’s suspension of any new economic land concession grants and review of existing ELCs. Provincial authorities involved in granting the now-suspended land concessions yesterday said they were ready to implement ...

Displaced villagers from two Phnom Penh neighborhoods on Wednesday submitted a petition to the UN’s human rights envoy, who is in Cambodia on a routine fact-finding mission. The envoy, Surya Subedi, was visiting the Phnom Penh eviction site of Borei Keila ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has issued an immediate and indefinite moratorium on the granting of new economic land concessions and called for a review of all existing concessions, a regulation signed by the premier yesterday states. Dated to an April 27 Council of Ministers’ meeting, the ...

The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday that it was undertaking measures to change its status from an NGO to a cooperative, a move that will ease the organization of donor money and push it to become more profit orientated ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday issued a moratorium on economic land concessions, temporarily halting a long-standing policy of granting land to private companies and those with powerful political connections that has sparked growing concerns from national and international human rights groups. The prime minister’s announcement comes ...

The Cambodia representative for the world’s largest shipping company said exports from Cambodia to Europe grew by more than 60 per cent during 2011, but have since weakened. “Rice exports grew a lot during 2011 and a lot of it went to Poland and France,” ...

Cambodia’s government, facing growing protests by villagers and warnings about disappearing wilderness, suspended the granting of land to domestic and foreign companies on Monday in a move to curb forced evictions and illegal logging. Rights groups in the impoverished but resource-rich Southeast Asian country said the ...

The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, Surya Subedi, was in Ratanakkiri province yesterday as part of his weeklong visit to the country to investigate the impact land concessions have on local communities. Some rights groups have singled out land concessions as the premier human rights ...

Loran Import-Export Co Ltd, Cambodia’s largest milled-rice exporter, is scheduled to start construction on a new rice mill this month worth more than US$2 million, according to the company’s General Director Lim Bunheng. The mill will help reduce the flow of Cambodia’s paddy rice into neighbouring ...

About 500 families from three communes in Siem Reap province’s Chi Kraeng district are seeking the prime minister’s intervention in a dispute with a rubber company over 1,000 hectares of land. Siem Reap provincial governor Chan Sophal said on Wednesday that Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker Seang ...