Economy and commerce

Hun Sen announced that 1.5 mln hectares of Economic Land Concessions were granted to private companies. 1.2 mln hectares, 80 percent, of the concessions are used for rubber plantation sector. He said, that Cambodia still maintain[s] 9.2 mln hectares of forest land even though 1.5 mln ...

The Asian Development Bank has refused to release a critical study on the impacts its $141.6 million railway project is having on thousands of Cambodian families because disclosure of the report could hurt its relationship with the government, an ADB spokeswoman said. Raising concerns about the ...

CAMBODIA’S first financial leasing company plans to rev up its market share for motorcycle financing from 15 to 45 percent starting this year. GL Finance plans to do so by increasing its number of branches here from 11 to 36, said Mitsuji Konoshita, chairman of Group ...

About 300 former employees of bankrupt mobile phone operator Mfone continued to protest yesterday outside the company’s closed Phnom Penh offices, demanding severance payments totaling $4.4 million for 1,092 workers. But Vong Savan, deputy secretary-general of the Labor Dissolution Commission at the Ministry of Social ...

Newly-Appointed Director General of the state-owned Telecom Cambodia (TC) Kim Vikra vowed Monday to enhance the enterprise’s governance in order to improve business operations and revenues. “I am committed to working with all colleagues in order to lead the enterprise to progress,”he said at his official ...

The Prime Minister ordered 49 family’s houses to be rebuild [sic] at Keo Pus Village, in the Steung Hav District of Sihanoukville, after they had been demolished by authorities earlier this month. He also ordered Bin Chhin, Chairman of the National Authority for Land Dispute ...

Unions and labour rights groups have spent recent months unashamedly drilling home a stark reminder: Cambodia’s minimum garment wage, at $61 per month, compares poorly with those in Thailand – where workers earn more than $200 a month – and Vietnam, which has a base ...

At Cambodia’s first ever international motor show over the weekend, top-end car manufactures including Mercedez-Benz, BMW and Ford presented their luxury range of SUV’s, sedans pickup trucks and motorbikes. Vehicle imports to Cambodia, which include cars, trucks and motorcycles, more than doubled to 1.9 million ...

About 200 former employees of bankrupt mobile phone operator Mfone yesterday protested outside the company’s shuttered offices, asking for the help of Prime Minister Hun Sen in the fight to get more than $4 million in compensation from the company. Mfone declared itself insolvent in ...

Sales of SIM cards reached 19.7 million last year, a 21 per cent rise from the 16.2 million sold in 2011, data from the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication (MPTC) shows. In contrast to the use of SIM cards, the number of telco operators decreased. In ...

Stevia Nutra Corporation, a Canadian agro-company, said in a press release on Friday that the initial growing season of stevia, commonly known as sweetleaf, in Cambodia was successfully completed. The first harvest of high-quality stevia leaves has now commenced and samples have been prepared for testing ...

The Cambodian automotive industry will expand after the Kingdom’s integration into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, thanks to the free flow of goods within the bloc and Cambodia’s competitive advantage as a low-cost manufacturer, according to Cambodian Commerce ...

Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a ...

As night falls in Phonm Penh, thousands of weary workers stream from textile factories, reflecting the abundance of jobs created by the clothing industry’s desire for cheap labor. However, as the number of international clothes companies tapping into Cambodia’s workforce grows, so does anger at the ...

State-owned fixed-line company Telecom Cambodia’s (TC) plan to join the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) has been postponed indefinitely because of its poor financial performance, reports The Phnom Penh Post. The company will need to redesign its business plan to improve operations, said Sarak Khan, secretary ...

With the number of cars on Cambodia’s roads growing at a consistent pace, high-end automotive distributors are jockeying for a foothold in the market, but they are not the only ones who stand to benefit from Cambodia’s splurge on cars. Working on the sidelines, the ...

Dotted with rice fields flanked by palm trees, Cambodia’s southeastern province of Kampong Speu is nothing short of picturesque. But behind the idyllic exterior is an on-going struggle to turn this region’s natural beauty into a global attraction and improve the lot of poor local farmers, ...

After years of discussion, the Cambodian and Thai governments on Tuesday agreed at the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Co-operation Strategy (ACMECS) summit in Laos to establish a Cambodian-Thai Business Council in a bid to enhance trade and investment between the ASEAN neighbours after a decline in ...

Cambodians tend to rely too heavily on self-funding or loans when starting businesses, experts say. In a bid to change that, an essay competition about business plans has been launched to give a platform for the winner to form business partnerships with those with capital. The ...

State-owned Telecom Cambodia lost more than $40 million during the five-year tenure of director general Lao Saroeun, who is now set to move into a new government job despite an investigation into alleged corruption at the company, officials said yesterday. Speaking at the annual meeting ...

People applying for land titles in urban areas are at a huge disadvantage compared to their rural counterparts due to the higher percentage of property disputes with powerful officials and businesspeople in the country’s cities, a new report on land registration has found. To improve ...

Group Lease Plc (GL), the SET-listed motorcycle leasing firm, is planning to expand into Laos and Vietnam next year after a successful move into Cambodia last year. Mitsuji Konoshita, the chairman and chief executive, said both Laos and Vietnam are promising markets, while the company ...

As night falls thousands of weary workers stream from textile factories that fan out across Phnom Penh’s outskirts. The clothing industry’s desire for cheap labour having created an abundance of jobs but as the number of international clothes companies tapping into Cambodia’s workforce grows, so does ...

NagaCorp, a gaming and entertainment hotel complex operator in Cambodia, has raised HK$1.21 billion ($156 million) from a top-up placement, after fixing the price at the bottom of the indicative range. The deal was launched at around 6pm yesterday in Hong Kong time, and the ...