News

Open source software is an important way forward and a useful impetus for development in Cambodia, according to attendees of the Kingdom’s first software conference this weekend. The conference, which centred on TYPO3, an open source content management system (CMS), was held this past weekend ...

The Svay Rieng Provincial Court has wrapped up an investigation of February’s triple shooting of female garment workers in Bavet City, a case in which the city’s former governor, Chhouk Bundith, is still the only suspect, a court official said yesterday. The court has charged ...

The number of mobile subscribers (SIM cards sold) increased 25.28 per cent during the first half of the year as a result of an expansion in the telecommunications market, according to officials. Mobile phone service subscribers increased by 3,963,734 or 25.28 per cent to 19,642,563 compared ...

Petrol prices have jumped by 150 riel (US$0.03) a litre, much to the dismay of Cambodia’s poor, as NGOs appealed to the government to take action. Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions (CCU), issued a letter dated August 16 appealing to Prime Minister Hun ...

Government officials met with more than 200 Phnom Penh families on Friday to lay out the state’s case for ownership of their land and the compensation they can expect when they are evicted from their homes situated along the city’s railway tracks. The $142 million project ...

A new US$10.9 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will fund a three-year project by international development NGO East Meets West (EMW) to improve sanitation and hygiene among the poor in rural Cambodia and Vietnam. According to EMW, the program seeks to combat the negative effects of ...

Borei Keila families have slept under staircases near piles of rubbish since they were forced from their homes on January 3, but they are hopeful of compensation following an unexpected visit from city officials last week. Representative Chum Ngan, 39, said village, commune and Phnom Penh ...

The number of mobile telephone subscriptions reached nearly 20  million at the end of June, representing 135 percent of the total population, the telecoms minister said last week. The number of mobile subscriptions first topped Cambodia’s total population of 14.5 million people in November last year, ...

Four days after requesting permission to get medical treatment outside prison, jailed radio station owner Mam Sonando, who Amnesty International considers “prisoner of conscience”, has yet to receive a reply from prison officials, an associate said yesterday. On Thursday Mr. Sonando requested outside medical treatment for ...

The United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk, President Obama’s Chief Trade Advisor, will be visiting Cambodia’s Siem Reap province on Aug. 30-31 to participate in the 44th ASEAN Economic Ministers’ meetings and the ASEAN-U.S. Business Summit, according to a press release from the U.S. Embassy ...

The Cambodian government has committed to the construction of five dams along the Mekong River in order to meet a huge demand for electricity, but environmental groups warn that severe repercussions loom for this strategy. “While each project proposed in Cambodia comes with a different set ...

The four-day second Cambodia International Machinery Industrial Fair (CIMIF 2012) has begun in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. Leading global brands of industrial equipment for textiles, garment and accessories are among the more than 200 exhibitors from 20 countries displaying their products. The exhibition provides a ...

More than 100 Cham families living in boats on the banks of Phnom Penh’s Chroy Chongva peninsula have agreed to relocate upriver after they celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan over the weekend, a community representative said on Friday. Matt Kriya, a representative ...

Cambodia has cultivated 1.93 million hectares of land, only 82 percent of its 2.36 million hectare target, due to a delay in monsoon rains which hampered rice sowing in the country, according to a media release from the Ministry of Agriculture on Sunday. The report said ...

More than 100 workers from the Horus Industry garment factory in Phnom Penh Meanchey district protested outside the Ministry of Social Affairs on Friday, demanding that the government order their employer to provide answers as to why hundreds have lost jobs at the factory. Workers say that of ...

Renaissance Minerals announced Friday it has discovered a high-grade gold deposit in an area in Mondolkiri province that lies within the Australian firm’s Cambodian Gold Project. The new find is located about 500 meters to the northeast of the company’s Okvau exploration zone. The announcement comes ...

International human rights groups continued to rally around the local rights worker Chan Soveth on Friday, two days after it emerged that the Adhoc staff member summoned by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on charges of aiding an unnamed perpetrator with an unidentified crime. In a ...

Two men from Kratie province who were removed from a vehicle on Tuesday while traveling to Phnom Penh to demonstrate at Prime Minister Hun Sen’s house over a land dispute, have been arrested by internal security police and charged with fraud, an official said yesterday. Sless ...

The Bank for Investment and Development of Cambodia (BIDC), a subsidiary of the Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BIDV), has been named as one of the five biggest banks in Cambodia after three years of operation BIDC general director Nguyen Van Hien said ...

A Cambodian-Thai delegation visited the cross-border railway site in Stung Bot Wednesday to examine the old line and a metal bridge which is being replaced, officials said. In addition to Stung Bot, where a new international border crossing is planned for Banteay Meanchey province, the officials ...

A Chinese academic with close ties to China’s state security apparatus has claimed that Beijing coordinated with the Cambodian government to influence the outcome of the Asean meeting in Phnom Penh, according to the Financial Times. In an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday, Chen ...

The Cambodian government has approved 53 new garment and footwear factories, worth an estimated US$338 million, during the first half of this year, compared with 38 last year valued at $180 million, despite the increase in the number of strikes affecting the industry. Officials and industry ...

More than 180,000 hectares on 28 of Cambodia’s 64 islands were reclassified as state private property for 31 companies seeking land concessions between 2008 and 2010, government sub-decrees reveal. The reclassification sub-decrees, compiled by investigators at the rights group Adhoc, pave the way for firms to ...

Aviation revenues have been released by government officials who were hesitant to reveal details but said yesterday the figures had increased by about three per cent. Mao Havannal, secretary of state for the Civil Aviation Secretariat, said after yesterday’s opening of a seminar on aviation insurance that ...