Multilateral development assistance

The aid sector needs more transparency to ensure that the public knows exactly where and how money is being spent, a consortium of NGOs said Tuesday. Tek Vannara, deputy executive director of the NGO Forum, said at a workshop in Phnom Penh that while the Council ...

Some 50 representatives of Phnom Penh’s embattled Boeng Kak community on Monday marched to the offices of the European Union and World Bank to request that the international bodies send observers to the upcoming Supreme Court hearing of anti-eviction activist Yorm Bopha on November 22. Ms. ...

When the extent of flood damage becomes clear, the Asian Development Bank may lower its economic growth forecast for Cambodia to reflect the severity of the aftermath, a senior official with agency’s local office said yesterday. “It is possible that we will have to revise downward ...

The first vice president of the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) on Monday blamed some of the deaths in this year’s floods on “careless” mothers. “Maybe the mothers are careless, maybe they don’t pay much attention to their children, so they drown,” NCDM First Vice ...

Cambodia appears unlikely to meet its target of becoming a high middle-income nation by 2030 and years of gains it has made reducing poverty could be erased by even a modest shock to the economy, according to the latest World Bank data. World Bank senior country ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy has asked the Asian Development Bank to suspend funding to Cambodia, whose government he says was not formed legally following the July elections. In a letter to ADB President Takehiko Nakao, Sam Rainsy, president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, said the ...

Cambodia’s factories are moving away from producing the most basic clothing items and diversifying to manufacture more intricate products for international buyers. As the garment sector has grown over the past decade, most garment factories have stuck to producing items such as T-shirts and jeans due ...

While the opposition party steps up its efforts to persuade the international community to cut ties with a government it says was formed by a “constitutional coup”, lawyers and analysts yesterday questioned whether the party’s reasoning has any legal basis. In a letter sent to the ...

Senior CPP members selected nominees for the National Assembly’s nine permanent committees behind closed doors on Tuesday, while the opposition CNRP, which has continued to boycott the Assembly over July’s disputed election, urged some of Cambodia’s foreign donors to immediately sever ties with the government ...

The United States has pledged 20 million U.S. dollars over the next three years to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to carry out school feeding program in Cambodia, said a WFP press release on Tuesday. The statement said the donation, made by the U.S. ...

Cambodia’s GDP growth was projected to reach 7 percent in equivalent to 15.65 billion U.S. dollars in 2013 despite a challenging global economic environment, the World Bank said Monday. Overall macroeconomic outlook remains positive, having sustained agricultural growth, continued strong performance of the tourism sector, a ...

Cambodia suffered far fewer natural disasters than either Vietnam or Thailand over the last decade but twice as many as Laos, the World Bank said Monday. Data published in the annual World Development Report also showed that the incidence of natural hazards in Cambodia in between ...

Energy demand in Southeast Asia is expected to increase by more than 80 per cent by 2035, fuelling some $240 billion in oil spending, a new report from the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) shows. In its “Southeast Asia Energy Outlook” published yesterday, the Paris-based IAEA ...

Cambodia’s economic growth rate is expected to exceed 7 percent both this year and next, the Asian Development Bank said Wednesday. The ADB maintained its forecast for this year’s economic growth at 7.2 percent, supported by strong exports and robust construction and service sectors. The ...

As much of the country grapples with crippling floods, a comprehensive report on global climate change released yesterday predicts the situation could be poised to get even worse. According to the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as the planet grows warmer, cyclones making ...

Cambodian housing rights activist Tep Vanny is in Washington this week, seeking to increase international pressure on Cambodian authorities to end forced evictions and find resolutions to longstanding land disputes. Tep Vanny, a housewife who has emerged as a leader for Cambodian victims of forced evictions, ...

The government’s National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) fails to meet regularly and is void of an annual budget to cover its operations while most of its staff members are totally unaware of their job description, according to a report released in March and funded ...

Cambodia had imported 1.1 million tons of petroleum in the first eight months of the year, a 3.5 percent decrease compared with the 1.14 million tons over the same period last year, the figures of the Ministry of Commerce showed Friday. From January to August this ...

SAN FRANCISCO — The Oddar Meanchey REDD+ (Reduced Emissions for Deforestation and Degradation) project in Cambodia is the first in the world to complete verification of emission reductions under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) with a triple gold Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) accreditation for emission ...

The case of a Battambang provincial government official ac­cused of embezzling some $200,000 in state funds has been referred to the Anti-Corruption Unit in Phnom Penh, provincial officials said Thursday. Battambang Provincial Court deputy prosecutor Long Hokmeng said a two-week investigation into the case brought against ...

The man leading Cambodia’s seemingly Sisyphean attempt to combat dengue fever can be found most days in a weakly lit office inside the Communicable Disease Control Department, which is stacked wall to wall with drooping folders and medical texts. For more than 10 years, the soft-spoken ...

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has said that its future support of agricultural development in Cambodia depends on the outcome of an investigation into a provincial official accused of embezzling funds from JICA-donated fertilizer. The accused, deputy bureau chief of Battambang’s department of agriculture Seng ...

A new project by the government and Japan’s aid agency seeks to assist small companies in Cam­bodia that are in need of specialist advice in order to develop and keep up with competitors in neighboring Asean countries. The aim of the two-year program, called “Strategic Strengthening ...

The government claims to have finished nearly a third of the work needed to rehabilitate the long-dilapidated railway line from Phnom Penh to the Thai border at Poipet, twice the figure reported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the main financier of the over-budget and ...