Bloomberg

Australia’s pact to allow some refugees to be transferred to Cambodia sets a troubling precedent for international practices on handling asylum seekers, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The deal, signed yesterday in Phnom Penh, applies to an initial 200 refugees detained by Australia ...

Fashion brands, including Europe’s biggest clothing retailer Inditex SA (ITX) and Hennes & Mauritz AB (HMB), said they are willing to pay more for clothes made in Cambodia, backing a trade union campaign for higher wages. The chains are among eight clothing retailers that include Next Plc (NXT) and Primark that have ...

Laos will push ahead with its ambition to become the “battery of Southeast Asia,” planning a Mekong River dam that has drawn opposition from neighbors and threatens to involve China and the U.S. Four Mekong River nations are scheduled to meet June 26-27 in Thailand to ...

Just over a month after a brutal police crackdown on striking Cambodian garment workers left at least five people dead, the country’s unions are calling for another strike in March, increasing the likelihood of further violence. At issue is the still-unresolved question of the workers’ minimum monthly wage. Roughly 700,000 ...

Vietnam Dairy Products Joint-Stock Co., the nation’s largest dairy producer, is building a milk factory in Cambodia as it plans a global expansion to more than double annual revenue to $3 billion by 2017. The company known as Vinamilk is opening a plant in the capital ...

Hennes & Mauritz AB, Europe’s second-biggest clothing retailer, said some H&M garments were produced without its knowledge or approval at a factory in Cambodia where workers were injured in a partial building collapse this week. A supplier of the Stockholm-based company placed two minor orders with ...

Suppliers to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and Hennes & Mauritz AB (HMB) agreed yesterday to pay about $145,000 in back wages and severance to about 160 workers at a Cambodian factory that closed in November, a labor activist involved in the deal said. The agreement, which ...

The International Monetary Fund said it expects economic growth in Cambodia to reach its potential of 7.5 percent in the medium term. The Washington-based IMF forecast growth of 6.7 percent this year, up from an estimated 6.5 percent in 2012, in its annual assessment of the ...

Manulife Financial Corp. (MFC), Canada’s largest insurer, has opened an office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, its first in the Southeast Asian nation. Manulife has about 40 people in its Cambodian unit, the Toronto-based insurer said today in a statement. ...

Workers at a large Cambodian garment factory that makes clothes for Levi’s, Gap and other well-known international brands are striking for more pay and better working conditions. More than 5,000 workers from the Singaporean-owned SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) Ltd. failed to reach an agreement with their ...

Trading on Cambodia’s stock exchange has begun for the first time after a state-run company completed its initial public offering. Some 13 million shares of the state-run Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority were offered at 6,300 riel ($1.57) per share. The stock exchange was officially launched in ...

Cambodia’s stock market, which is set to open next week after several delays, may be able to lure five-to-10 initial public offerings a year, according to Korea Exchange Inc., the Cambodian government’s partner in the bourse. State-owned Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) will start trading ...

Investors should be cautious when pursuing the opportunities for growth present in Myanmar and Cambodia, Southeast Asia’s frontier markets, Templeton Asset Management Ltd. said. In Cambodia, state-owned Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority will have its initial public offering this month, making it the first to ...

President Hu Jintao today becomes the first Chinese head of state to visit Cambodia in 12 years, in a trip days before Southeast Asian leaders gather for talks that may touch on territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Hu’s visit, which lasts until April 2, ...

Enthusiasm about the start of trading at the exchange, which opened last July without a single listed company, extends beyond the borders of the Southeast Asian country. Investors including Templeton Emerging Markets Group Chairman Mark Mobius said they plan to participate in Cambodia’s stock market ...

Investors in Cambodia, tied with Yemen as the world’s 164th-cleanest country for doing business, face risks in a planned stock market because of ineffective financial and legal systems, the country’s exiled opposition leader said. “Among the little dragons of Southeast Asia, Cambodia is the least encouraging,” ...

Rice futures jumped the most permitted by the Chicago Board of Trade, advancing to a one- month high, as flood damage to crops in Southeast Asia boosted prospects for U.S. exports. Storms since September damaged 12.5 percent of paddies in Thailand, the world’s largest exporter, and ...