Economy and commerce

The trade commissioner and foreign affairs representative of the European Union (E.U.) have turned down a request from 13 members of the European Parlia­ment that they immediately investigate Cambodia’s much criticized economic land concessions, but said they were monitoring the issue closely. In a March letter ...

Unions representing more than 15,000 members have called for justice for three women ahead of round two of legal action against their alleged shooter, deposed Bavet town governor Chhouk Bandith. Bandith, who is accused of shooting the three workers during a protest at a factory in ...

The Japanese athletics brand ASICS said Friday that it would push its four Cambodian sub-contractors to join a programme that monitors conditions in garment and shoe factories. “We will strongly request to our sub-contractors in Cambodia to sign up to this programme,” Katsumi Funakoshi, ASICS ...

Labor rights activists and a government official accused the International Labor Organization’s Better Factories Cambodia program of ineffectiveness in its monitoring of factory conditions following a deadly ceiling collapse on Thursday at a shoe factory in Kompong Speu province. Moeun Tola, labor program head of the ...

AEON Microfinance (Cambodia) Co, part of Japan-based AEON Group, said sales by instalment for electrical appliances and motorbikes increased by 715 per cent in the first quarter of 2013 year on year, a trend industry experts say will grow further with increasing demand for electronics. Started ...

The government wants to play a bigger role in helping local businesses remain competitive and, to this end, the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME) has launched a new award to recognise companies that have achieved high produc-tivity standards. Ten companies will be awarded in ...

After reaching agreement late last month, the contract for a $90 million concession loan from Japan to Cambodia was officially signed in Phnom Penh yesterday to improve 83.5 kilometres of National Road 5. The construction is scheduled to start in June 2015 and will be ...

Australia announced yesterday that it will increase the amount of aid it provides Cambodia by about US$13 million (A$13.2 million) in the coming year, putting the country’s official development assistance at $96.1 million. ...

In the petition to the National Road Administration, Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Transportation – Mr. Duong Hong Thanh, reported that at the time the Vietnam-Cambodia agreement on land transportation took effect, only 40 cars of each country were allowed to cross ...

The deaths of at least two Cambodian workers and injuries sustained by 10 colleagues at a shoe factory southwest of Phnom Penh once more shine a light on conditions in the global garment manufacturing industry. Thursday’s accident at the Wing Star Shoe factory in the Cambodian ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday that he hoped land being registered to rural families as part of the government’s nationwide land-titling program would be used to cultivate rubber trees in order to help the country compete with Vietnam as the world’s third-largest rubber exporter. ...

A recent string of disasters rocking Bangladesh’s garment industry has highlighted its factories’ shocking safety record, and stoked optimism that giant fashion brands will flock to move their orders to countries like Cambodia. But Cambodia’s garment industry has not experienced any major deluge of business so ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday charged two staffers of Vietnamese rubber concessionaire Hoang Anh Ratanakkiri (CRD) with causing intentional damage for allegedly setting fire to several homes belonging to a landowner with whom they were embroiled in a land dispute, deputy prosecutor Mom Vanda said. ...

The beauty business in the Kingdom is growing rapidly as incomes are rising and the middle-class is growing, industry insiders told the Post yesterday. In the first three months of this year, the Kingdom imported cosmetic products worth $9.9 million, an increase of 130 per cent ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday lashed out at the opposition party’s concerns over the interest rates charged by commercial banks to farmers. SRP lawmaker Yim Sovann said commercial banks in Cambodia charge customers very high interest rates, and said it is much higher than in other ...

With the potential for vast state revenues from oil extraction and mining in coming years, Cambodia is currently failing to manage its nascent extractive industries according to a think tank. New York-based Revenue Watch Institute yesterday launched its 2013 Resource Governance Index, which included Cambodia for ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced in late March that the nation was on target to move from the status of a low-income to a lower-middle-income nation by the end of 2013, ranking it the 15th country that obtained high economic growth in the world in the ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday inaugurated a rubber processing plant here, saying the factory would contribute to developing the country’s fast-growing rubber sector. The 7 million U.S. dollar plant, invested by Cambodia’s Sopheak Nika Investment Agro-Industry Company, was built on the area of 9 ...

Cambodia’s cassava exports reached 245,438 tonnes in the first quarter this year, a 47 per cent decline quarter-on-quarter, from 465,640 tonnes in the final quarter of last year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce released early this month. While most exports went to Thailand, ...

The Kingdom imported 412,190 tonnes of petroleum in the first quarter of 2013, compared with 471,000 tonnes in the same period the previous year, a decline of 12 per cent, according to the Ministry of Commerce. A private sector representative said the drop does not mean ...

Bilateral trade volume between Cambodia and Japan had amounted to 180 million U.S. dollars in the first three months of this year, up 14 percent compared with the 158 million U.S. dollars at the same period last year, a report of the Japan External Trade ...

A Vietnamese rubber tycoon has rejected accusations by Global Witness, a group that campaigns on resource issues, that it was involved in a land grabbing crisis in Southeast Asia. Doan Nguyen Duc, the chairman of Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) Group, told Vietnamese media the information ...

On May 13, we ran an interview with London-based NGO Global Witness accusing the Deutsche Bank and the International Finance Corporation of financing two Vietnamese rubber companies that are allegedly involved in land grabs in Cambodia and Laos. We asked both banks for a response ...

In the wake of a new report from environmental rights group Global Witness rebuking the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Deutsche Bank for investing in rubber plantations accused of illegal logging and forced evictions, both institutions have denied responsibility and deflected the blame ...