Trade policy and regulation

Cambodia needs increased investments, and for that, deeper regional as well as global integration is crucial, Moody’s Investors Service has said. The B2 sovereign bond rating is constrained by the small size of the economy, low per capita income and high level of dollarization while robust ...

China will work with Cambodian officials to broaden the range of agricultural products that the Asian economic giant allows to be imported from the Kingdom, government officials said yesterday. Ken Ratha, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, confirmed that China’s General Administration, Quality Supervision, Inspection and ...

Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Sunday reiterated their continued commitment to the realization of ASEAN Community by 2015 and beyond. They pledged their commitment in the joint communique issued on the final day of their 47th annual meeting in Nay ...

Cambodian rice exporters are keen on winning the Philippines government’s latest rice import tender for 500,000 tons of 25% broken white rice slated for August 27, 2014, according to local sources. ...

The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, must force British clothing companies to investigate whether garments sourced from Cambodia are made at factories with fair labour practices, the unions have warned. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trade Union Congress, has written to Mr Cable warning that ...

Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) are intra-state legal mechanisms which encourage foreign investment. This is particularly so as they provide foreign investors with Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms to enforce investment protections through international arbitration against the host state before a neutral tribunal. Cambodia has signed over ...

Italy has demanded that the European Union restrict Cambodia’s duty-free import status, as concerns over the survival of that country’s rice sector appear to be reaching a fever pitch. According to rice industry website Oryza, the Italian government has officially submitted a request to the EU ...

Cambodia duty-free rice exports to the European Union have this week come under fresh attack from producers in Italy, who say the beneficial treatment is restricting the potential of Italian rice exports. An Italian agriculture collective of farmers, which includes representatives from the Italian Association of ...

The pace of Cambodia’s rice exports are expected to slow this year. Unable to maintain the steady rate of previous years, the export volume for the first half of 2014 is much the same as it was this time last year. At the end of June, ...

In an effort to bring stability back to the country’s embattled but crucial garment industry, the Ministry of Labor has joined forces with the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Swedish clothing giant H&M in a campaign for unions and factories to sign direct agreements to ...

Thailand’s capital market should aim to be a funding base for Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar to gain the full benefit from high growth in the Greater Mekong Subregion and a more integrated region through the Asean Economic Community (AEC), panellists at a Euromoney Conferences forum ...

Italy plans to lobby the European Union to halt duty-free imports of rice from Cambodia to protect local rice growers and millers, an industry source says. In a report Thursday, oryza.com said Italy was preparing to submit a report to Brussels saying that Cambodian rice was ...

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and Malaysia increased during the first quarter this year by 17.6 percent compared to the same period last year, a Malaysian official said Tuesday. Trade increased from $89.63 million to $105.4 million, Rasazlan Abdul Rashid, the Malaysian ambassador to Cambodia, told a ...

Cambodia collected 444 million U. S. dollars in tax revenue during the first five months of the year, up 12 percent over the same period last year, said a press statement released by the General Department of Taxation on Wednesday. In May alone, the department ...

SIEM PANG DISTRICT, Stung Treng province – For the elite few granted the right to level swathes of woodland in the north of this remote province, the timber trade is worth a fortune. For the Forestry Administration—the government body charged with policing logging—business is also booming. While ...

The price of durian from Thailand has risen sharply this year, leading to shrinking profits for fruit vendors in Phnom Penh as demand from China for the spiky, pungent fruit grows more robust. On Sihanouk Boulevard, fruit vendor Heng Sovanna said that since March, the price ...

Grand Twins International (Cambodia) Co. Ltd., a Phnom Penh-based manufacturer of clothes for U.S. athletic brands, has again delayed its listing on the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX), officials said Wednesday. The company was expected to list Thursday, but technical problems prevented it from doing so, according ...

The Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia (TRC) last week warned mobile operator Smart that it could face legal action for attempting to lure customers away from rival operator qb, and ordered Smart to resolve the issue “immediately,” according to a letter from TRC to Smart’s CEO ...

Police raided a discount store in Phnom Penh and seized more than 1,000 bottles of beauty products on Monday after receiving a tip that the shop was selling counterfeit goods, an official said. Police confiscated 872 bottles of shower gel and 280 bottles of whitening cream ...

In less than two months, smokers indulging in Cambodia’s inexpensive cigarettes will have to reach a little deeper into their wallets. Starting in July, the tax on cigarettes will jump from 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the retail price, with a tax base ...

This season’s Kampot pepper production is expected to reach 27 tonnes, up from 21 tonnes last year thanks to a larger area of harvested land. But Nguon Lay, president of the Kampot Pepper Association, said on Sunday that despite the increase, adverse weather conditions meant the ...

About 150 garment workers turned out to the Phnom Penh of­fices of the United Sisterhood Alliance NGO on Sunday to watch a politically charged fashion show entitled “Beautiful Clothes, Ugly Reality.” Aimed to highlight “the income gap between Cambodian garment workers and the selected CEOs of ...

The Takeo Provincial Court charged eight union representatives with incitement Sunday for taking part in a garment factory strike, bringing to 17 the number of unionists charged this month alone. The latest in the spate of recent arrests came just ahead of today’s high-level meeting between ...

The National Assembly approved changes to the country’s customs law yesterday, in order to comply with Association of Southeast Asian Nations intergration standards. The changes demand border operations increase human resources, reduce paperwork and modernise procedures in order to simplify border exchange and facilitate trade between ...