Ministries and other national bodies

Environment Minister Say Sam Al on Monday said that more than 9,000 hectares granted to companies as economic land concessions (ELCs) were recently taken back from the owners because local villagers had been farming the land first, and announced that 14 companies had been put ...

In the coming weeks, a task force composed of officials from the ministries of tourism, religion, culture and education will lead an expedition to a remote patch of forest on Kampot province’s Bokor Mountain where Vietnamese tourists pray, the education minister said Monday. ...

Due to a lack of funding, the Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts has delayed publishing guidelines that are meant to increase clarity on inspection procedures for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). ...

The Transport Ministry is speeding up work on a joint plan for bus services that would link the far South and Malaysia to meet the needs of commuters between the two countries. Thailand also plans to hold talks with Cambodian authorities this month over increasing ...

Environment Minister, Say Sam Al, said on Monday that the Royal Government of Cambodia has cut off over 14,000 hectares of land and handed over to citizens, and military forces. ...

Cambodia’s construction sector attracted a total investment of 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, down 10 percent from 2.77 billion U.S. dollars in 2013, according to official data on Monday. ...

At the behest of Prime Minister Hun Sen, prisons across the country Sunday marked International Women’s Day by releasing a total of 22 female inmates who are either pregnant or had young children with them in jail, including a woman convicted of attempted murder over ...

The Interior Ministry has given Cambodian dissident Sourn Serey Ratha permission to proceed with the registration of a political party despite the self-exiled government critic’s recent conviction in absentia for plotting an attack on the state. ...

Two government ministers will meet with a National Assembly commission on Monday to discuss a tourism management plan for Bo­kor Mountain, according to CNRP lawmaker Yem Ponhea­rith, who last month visited the mountain to inspect burial sites popular with Vietnamese tourists. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen last week appointed 14 high-ranking officials to a working group that is now responsible for overseeing his bodyguard unit during all events that he and his wife attend, the unit’s commander said Thursday. ...

Police shut down the Our Home orphanage and school in Phnom Penh on Thursday, two days after child sex abuse allegations led to the arrest of its director—a former head of the anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), which carried out the investigation. ...

There are now more than 1 million estimated Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand. This could be a threat to Cambodia’s economy and politics in the future, an analyst says. ...

More than 600 military police will be sent as reinforcements all over Cambodia today to aid the National Police, Ministry of Mines and Energy authorities and court officials as they inspect and crack down on illegal mining in the Kingdom. ...

The body of a fisherman was discovered floating in the Tonle Sap lake in Kompong Chhnang province’s Boribor district on Tuesday after a vicious boating attack, police said Wednesday, in what is the fourth such incident on the lake this year. ...

Chin Sarin has been removed as Sihanoukville’s governor, according to the Interior Ministry, less than four months after the city’s police chief was sacked amid criticism that he was sleeping on the job as a violent crime wave swept through the seaside tourist hub. ...

Russia and Cambodia are in the final stages of drafting an extradition treaty that would clear the way for Moscow to have fugitive developer Sergei Polonsky sent home to face multimillion-dollar embezzlement charges, Russian media reported Wednesday. ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday warned to take action against any ill-willed groups that have attempted to topple the government. ...

For the second time in as many weeks, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction has asked rights group Licadho to provide data collected on the identity of land dispute complainants. ...

Cambodia is inching closer to lifting a self-imposed ban on inter-country adoptions and believes its efforts to reform will soon meet preconditions for restarting the adoption process with countries that outlawed the practice in response to numerous high-profile child trafficking scandals, the government said Tuesday. ...

A businesswoman who was arrested in Thailand in December and extradited to Cambodia over charges of plotting to rape and murder the wife and daughter of the country’s commerce minister claimed after being denied bail by the Appeal Court on Tuesday that the minister was ...

Commerce Minister Sun Chanthol said yesterday that his ministry was initiating reforms that would see Cambodia’s ease of starting a business ranking leap from the current 184 to 21. He said the government would also need to make changes to the Company Registration Law, reduce ...

The number of children in the country who are stunted—leaving them physically smaller and mentally weaker than their properly nourished peers—dropped by 7 percent between 2010 and 2014, according to a nationwide survey released Tuesday. ...

Despite Cambodia’s unofficial freeze on inter-country adoptions, the Ministry of Social Affairs recently urged partner countries to reforge, in principle, their adoption partnerships with the Kingdom. In a statement issued on Monday, the ministry opened the application process for international adoption agencies, as only adoption agencies ...

Commerce Minister Sun Chanthol called on business owners to clean up their activities in the Kingdom, in order to remain competitive, especially in light of the ASEAN Economic Community integration due to be realised at the end of the year. Private sector companies have traditionally raised ...