Aid and development

The Education Ministry and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said Monday that they had begun a joint investigation into the misappropriation of textbooks intended for secondary school students under an ADB-funded scheme. Two NGOs on Thursday released results of an investigation into 33 secondary schools, which ...

American lobby group Human Rights Watch has lashed out at Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, for her trip to Cambodia earlier this month. In a commentary posted Thursday, it noted that the IMF recognized that corruption threatened market integrity, distorted competition, ...

School textbooks paid for by the Asian Development Bank have been routed to district education offices, some of which are charging schools for books that are supposed to be free, an NGO investigation has found. The textbooks on Khmer literature, maths, geography, morality and science were ...

The French Agency for Development will provide $26 million in loans to the Cambodian government to rehabilitate irrigation systems across three provinces in the northwest. Speaking at the signing ceremony for the deal yesterday, Aun Pornmoniroth, the Minister of Economy and Finance, said the new systems ...

A pilot cashew-peeling factory in Kampong Thom province aims to make business easier for farmers who have traditionally relied upon sending their raw harvest elsewhere for processing. With $130,000 from the Asia Development Bank, the building went up in May on 3,600 square metres in Kampong ...

Smoke billowed over Phnom Penh International Airport and people lay on the grass verges near an aircraft simulator on Friday as hundreds of rescue service personnel and firefighters took part in the airport’s fourth-ever full-scale emergency exercise. Hundreds of soldiers and police, as well as actors ...

A financial review by USAID, the U.S. government’s development arm, into local health NGO Reproductive and Child Health Alliance (RACHA) has found financial mismanagement coupled with a lack of transparency and oversight within the organization that may point to evidence of fraudulent activity. Well-known for its ...

Cambodia’s economy is expected to maintain the robust growth of over 7 percent this year even though the country is still trapped in political dispute and recovering from the aftermath of recent floods, senior officials and bankers said. But some analysts predicted that political trouble, coupled ...

Returning from a state visit to Japan on Tuesday, a member of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government dismissed the possibility that newly upgraded ties with Japan and Cambodia’s decision to join its Asean neighbors in a “freedom of overflight” pact with Tokyo might strain its ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed to upgrade Cambodia’s diplomatic relations with Japan to a “strategic level” during talks in Tokyo on Sunday, but also thanked his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, for making efforts to mend relations with neighbor China, according to media reports. During a state ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen was scheduled to meet with Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Sunday, a day after Japan and the member states of Asean agreed to ensure “freedom of overflight” in the region. The agreement will likely be taken as an affront by ...

Asian Development Bank (ADB), will conduct a press tour in Kampong Thom province in Cambodia to evaluate and report on how the “Improving Market Access for the Poor in Central Cambodia Project” is helping to increase household incomes and create jobs for poor communities in ...

Kimseang spent much of his childhood enduring harassment and verbal abuse, with teachers and other children dismissing him because of a visual and physical impairment. While the kingdom has seen overall access to education improve from a 69 per cent net enrollment rate in 1991 ...

More than 31,000 households were evacuated and 168 people died across 20 provinces during this year’s rainy-season flooding, according to the Humanitarian Response Forum (HRF), which released its final report on the flooding Monday. In general, flooding did not affect Cambodia as badly as in 2011, ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a 100 million USD aid package to support the development of tourism infrastructure in the three Mekong River countries of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The decision was made at the annual meeting on tourism development of the Greater Mekong ...

Stronger disaster planning is needed to avoid future devastation and loss of life caused by flooding, according to a report published by World Vision yesterday. The report, titled Cities Prepare, recommends that the Cambodian government and civil society work to place “a stronger emphasis on disaster risk ...

Infrastructure-funding agreements and a memorandum on military cooperation will be signed when Prime Minister Hun Sen visits Japan next week, the government said yesterday. The premier will meet his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, in Tokyo late next week, a statement released yesterday by the Ministry of ...

Germany has pledged $64 million in aid donations to Cambodia for this year and next, amounting to a “substantial increase” over the past two years of official German assistance to the country, the German Embassy announced on Wednesday. Germany’s new aid package, the majority of which—$54 ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Government of Australia are expanding access to economical and reliable energy for rural Cambodian households, including through the promotion of cookstoves in Svay Rieng and Kampong Cham provinces. A $6.1 million Australian Aid grant, administered by ADB, will finance ...

A medical team of 10 Chinese ophthalmologists from the Beijing Tongren Hospital have helped operate on eye patients in Cambodia as a part of the celebrations of the 55th anniversary of China-Cambodia diplomatic ties. The team have spent a two-day humanitarian mission at the Preah Ketomelea ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday that the country’s development in all fields could not be detached from China’s aid and vowed to further deepen ties between the two countries. According to the figures recorded by the Cambodian Finance Ministry, to date, China has ...

The German government on Wednesday signed up to provide 64 million U.S. dollars to Cambodia for two-year projects in health, rural development, governance reform, and education. According to a press release after the signing ceremony, 27 million U.S. dollars would be allocated to health, 26.5 ...

US and Cambodian governments have presented a united front calling for the country’s agriculture industry to diversify, modernise and commercialise. US ambassador William E Todd and the Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development Yim Chhay Ly led an ...

Banteay Meanchey province’s former governor got a surprise Monday when he attended a ceremony in Phnom Penh expecting to receive a donation of 200 power tillers from Chinese officials, but received eight small water pumps instead. Former Banteay Meanchey governor Oung Oeun and the governor ...