Economy and commerce

With competition rife in Cambodia’s telecommunication market, two of the country’s largest mobile phone operators have engaged in a battle over prices and are at odds over the tactics being used to gain market share. On Friday, the Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia (TRC) ordered all mobile ...

Jarai minority villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district protested in two locations yesterday against a Vietnamese company that community leaders say has been clearing their protected land and forcing villagers to accept inadequate compensation. Community leader Sev Hem said 30 angry villagers directly confronted five Company 72 ...

The Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia (TRC) is calling all mobile phone operators to attend a meeting next week in order to reconsider the costs for within-and across-network calls, after disputes over bonus promotions in Cambodia’s crowded telecoms market. TRC director Mao Chakrya said that for the ...

Illegal border movements, illegal logging, drug trafficking, illegal fishing and unofficial cross border trade are among the issues being confronted by Laos and Cambodia along their shared border at the moment. The report was made during a meeting held between Champassak provincial authorities from Laos and ...

Hotel transaction volumes in Asia hit US$620 million (Bt18.18 billion) in the first quarter, up 190 per cent from the same period last year, and properties in Southeast Asia are attracting investor attention, according to real-estate services company Jones Lang LaSalle. “Rising visitor arrivals, robust trading ...

Senior government officials yesterday were promoting the development of the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector in the Kingdom, particularly the concept of digital empowerment among young people. Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, who presided over the opening of ITU Asia-Pacific Regional Development Forum, held in ...

An online trading firm based in the tax haven of Cyprus is planning to open a subsidiary in Cambodia, an account manager at IronFX’s headquarters in Cyprus said yesterday. “We are on the planning stage in Cambodia. We are now studying law and regulations in the ...

The Court of Appeal yesterday heard the case of a land dispute between a 70-year old woman from Kompong Chhang province and a company owned by the wife of the Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy over a 3,000 square meter parcel of land. In May ...

After the fourth Joint Trade Commission (JTC) recently, Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom said that Thailand and Cambodia had the potential to drive two-way trade up by 30 per cent, due to strong growth in 2012. Last year, bilateral trade grew by 40.5 per cent year on ...

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and Thailand went down by 2.3 percent during the first quarter of this year, according to the statistics released by [the] Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh on Monday. Officials said the drop was due to “Thai baht appreciation, not ongoing border conflict” ...

Thailand and Cambodia are on a path towards the setting up of a special trade zone that will see the two neighbors actively trade cassava and corn. Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom revealed on Monday that the 4th Thailand-Cambodia Joint Trade Committee meeting, held last week, saw ...

The government on Friday released a draft of a new public policy guide on the county’s contentious land sector, a move that was welcomed by NGOs, who also called for the government to hold further consultations on the draft. Local rights groups have singled out ...

The World Bank has warned that the rapid growth of lending by Cambodia’s Banks is still a concern, despite a recent slow-down in credit disbursals. “Credit growth, which has been driven largely by wholesale and retail financing, and starting in 2011 agriculture financing, has eased to ...

TOEK CHHOU DISTRICT, Kampot province – A donor-backed project launched here on Saturday aims to produce Cambodia’s first export-quality sea salt and invigorate the struggling local salt industry. In a ceremony among Kampot’s vast fields of coastal saltpans and low levees, company representatives from Asia Salt ...

The World Bank has revised its growth prediction for Cambodia upwards to 7 per cent for 2013, from its January prediction of 6.7 per cent, a revision it attributes to the performance of the Kingdom’s agriculture, tourism and garment sectors. Cambodia’s outlook is generally positive, according ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen chastised local authorities in Preah Sihanouk province on Friday for their inability to prevent a water shortage in early April that crippled businesses in the tourist hub of Sihanoukville and left locals without running water for almost a week. The incident ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Saturday asked some 4,000 garment factory workers for their votes in July’s national elections at a rally in Phnom Penh attended by members of several CPP-aligned unions, according to those in attendance. Cambodian Union Federation president Choun Mom Thol said ...

Cambodia’s nine mobile phone operators on Friday agreed to refrain from engaging in unfair competition by offering generous top-up bonuses aimed at increasing their market share, officials said. Mao Chakrya, director of the Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia (TRC), said that all of the country’s operators agreed ...

Local authorities and Ratanakkiri provincial forestry officials yesterday visited an area in O’Yadav district where community leaders say a Vietnamese company known as “Company 72” has razed an estimated 1,000 hectares of protected forest since 2011. “The villagers complained to the authorities many times, but ...

The government has won an arbitration case in a World Bank court, successfully countering a $300 million claim made by a U.S based company over a failed power plant project dating back to 1996. According to a statement from the Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick ...

A $3 million initiative to purify the quality of rubber trees planted across the country is intended to spur farmers to plant more rubber, a government official said. Ly Phalla, director general of the General Directorate of Rubber at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, ...

Cambodia imported 412,190 tons of Crude Oil in Q-1 of Y 2013, a 12% fall compared with the 471,000 tons it imported at the same period last year, the Commerce ministry’s report showed Saturday. During the January-March period this year, the country spent US$ 397-M to ...

Cambodia’s banking industry recorded a slight increase in lending in the first two months of this year after a sharp rise last year, according to a consolidated data provided by the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) on Saturday. The data showed that the kingdom’s 33 commercial ...

Cambodia exported garment and textile products in equivalent to 1.34 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter of 2013, up 17 percent from 1.14 billion U.S. dollars at the same period last year, the Commerce Ministry’s report showed Friday. Garment industry is the country’s ...