Economy and commerce

U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia, William E. Todd returned from a reverse trade mission in the United States to promote trade and investment opportunities in Cambodia. Around 50 Cambodian business representatives accompanied Mr. Todd in meetings with several U.S. businesses, investors, and trade associations in Long Beach, ...

Thai AirAsia (TAA) is breaking into the Bangkok-Siem Reap segment long dominated by Bangkok Airways in a move reflecting Cambodia’s new directive to open up its top destination for mass tourism. TAA secured permission from Cambodian authorities to launch a daily service starting on Oct ...

Deposit and loans at major commercial banks have continued to climb over the first half of this year, industry officials say. Grant Knuckey, chief executive officer of ANZ Royal Bank, said yesterday that ANZ continues to see strong growth in trade finance led by the agricultural ...

While Kampot pepper and Kampong Speu palm sugar carry the brand-building Geographical Indication (GI) status, newcomers seeking the same tag continue to wait for funding to get their products off the ground. In 2010, Kampot pepper and Kampong Speu palm sugar were the first Cambodian goods ...

The Ministry of Education is preparing to distribute questionnaires nationwide to assess the gap between the job market and subjects being studied by university students. As Cambodia’s economy develops, employers have complained that there are too many graduates in subjects such as management and business, ...

The Asian garment manufacturing industry will undergo further segmentation in the next three to four years as competition becomes more intense, experts said. China, Thailand and Vietnam will mainly produce high-end clothing, while Bangladesh, Laos, Burma and Cambodia will mainly produce low-end clothing. Lu Qijian, ...

The Ministry of Commerce said Monday that it has granted operating licenses to 1,368 new companies in the first half of this year, down 19 percent compared with the 1,694 firms over the same period last year. ...

In a release, Oxley Holdings Limited announced that the Group’s 49%-owned associated company, Oxley-Worldbridge (Cambodia) Co., Ltd., had entered into an amendment agreement dated 1 July 2013 in respect of a share sale and purchase agreement dated 22 May 2013 to acquire all the shares ...

Romam Gvin could be described as a counterintuitive voter. Intuition might lead you to believe that Mr. Gvin blames the government for the loss of his land to the Vietnamese rubber company that now owns everything for as far as the eye can see here in ...

Sales of Cambodia’s World Trade Organization-certified pepper from Kampot province fell to 21 tonnes at the end of this year’s harvest season, a slight decline from 22 tonnes after the end of last year’s season. Nguon Lay, president of the Kampot Pepper Association, said fast-changing ...

Hui Tien Jien has eaten at a Chinese restaurant called Old Place Seafood two times – and he’s been in Phnom Penh for only two days. Chinese restaurants in Phnom Penh are spreading in response to a flood of tourists from China: tourists who insist ...

Cambodia-based SOMA Energy will construct two bio-mass power-generating plants that convert rice husks into electricity to supply Cambodian farmers working in the provinces. SOMA energy, a subsidiary of SOMA group, has invested nearly $3 million in the construction of the plants, one of which is located ...

Wages for Cambodian garment workers decreased by more than 20 percent in real terms between 2001 and 2011 despite the industry’s exponential increase in exports, which in 2012 were valued at more than $4 billion, according to a recent report by a U.S.-based workers advocacy ...

The success Qatar’s Ooredoo had with being issued a mobile phone licence in Myanmar is an encouraging development for Middle East investors who are looking into the possibility of entering a venture or opening a business in Southeast Asia. Let’s take a look at Cambodia. ...

Cambodia’s rice harvest is forecast to reach 9.1 million tonnes this year, down from an estimated 9.3 million tonnes last year but up from 8.8 million tonnes in 2011, the Food and Agricultural Organization said Thursday. The estimates were contained in the UN agency’s quarterly Crop ...

Sales of Cambodia’s World Trade Organization-certified palm sugar from Kampong Speu province dipped to 12 tonnes at the end of the harvest season this year, about a 30 per cent decline from 2012. Two districts with palm trees in Kampong Speu province were granted geographical indication ...

According to defence lawyer Kao Ty, the court decided to uphold the decision of the provincial court in a closed-door hearing last Friday. “They said if those eight members and workers were released on bail, they would cause a problem again,” he said, adding that ...

Reporters in Cambodia seeking statistics from government ministries and departments are used to being given the brush-off from time to time, but in the run-up to the July 28 national election, things appear to have worsened. The Council for the Develop­ment of Cambodia (CDC) has for ...

Executives at some of the telecommunication firms indebted to bankrupt mobile operator Mfone said Thursday they owe much less than claimed by the company, and will negotiate with Mfone’s administrator to find a resolution before a complaint is filed in court. “We do owe Mfone money, ...

The total weight of goods transported through the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port in the first six months of the year was up 15 percent compared with the same period last year, according to figures released Thursday. Some 1.51 million tons of goods passed through the port in ...

Cambodia saw a trade deficit of 1.32 billion U.S. dollars in the first six months of this year, according to a Commerce Ministry’s report on Thursday. The country’s total imports and exports were valued at 7.62 billion U.S. dollars during the period, up 20 percent from ...

Bankrupt mobile phone operator Mfone is planning to file a com­plaint with the Phnom Penh Muni­cipal Court against six tele­com­muni­ca­tions firms it says have failed to pay back more than $1 million in outstanding debt to the firm, the court administrator charged with overseeing Mfone’s ...

At a congressional hearing in Washington on Tuesday that scathingly rebuked Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling CPP, a U.S. lawmaker called for legislation to cut American aid to Cambodia following the national election on July 28. Representative Steve Chabot, who chaired the House Subcom­mittee ...

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and South Korea nearly reached the $1 billion dollar realm in 2012, a hike of nearly 100 per cent from the year before, senior officials said yesterday. According to official data from the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, total bilateral trade between ...