News

A ninth telecoms operator would enter the Cambodian market next year, officials said yesterday, surprising insiders who claimed the sector was already overcrowded. Camintel, a joint Cambodian state- and Korean-owned company, would offer mobile services in 2012, CEO Kang Namkook said yesterday at a telecommunications conference ...

The results of an investigation into two mass fainting incidents at a factory in Kampong Chhnang confirmed that M&V International Manufacturing had violated Cambodian labour law by forcing some staff to work overtime and failing to give them a full day off each week, according ...

The Forestry Administration has teamed up with the Cambodian Wildlife Conservation Society and Forest Carbon to develop a large-scale REDD project in eastern Cambodia, officials said yesterday. REDD – or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a UN initiative – is one of the ...

Total outstanding loans in the microfinance sector reached $815.47 million in the third quarter, a 25.8 percent rise compared to beginning of the year, according to data released yesterday by the Cambodia Microfinance Association (CMA) Despite growth in the sector, microfinance institutions said nonperforming loans were ...

Total exports during the first nine months of the year rose 41 percent to $3.5 billion compared to the same period in 2010, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce. Of the total amount, $3.1 billion was in garments, $10 million in paddy rice, ...

The government’s proposed NGO draft law is a barrier to effective aid and development, civil society organizations said yesterday during a workshop in Phnom Penh focused on compiling a report on Cambodia’s climate for NGOs ahead of a global forum on aid effectiveness to be ...

More than 60 percent of nearly 50,000 evacuated families have returned home as floods recede in areas along the Mekong River and other parts of the country, said the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM). Nearly all displaced families have gone back to flood-wrecked villages in ...

October marks the start of the main rice harvest in Thailand, the world’s largest exporter of the grain. Traders are waiting to see the full impact of flooding on the crop, but it’s already clear that output across Southeast Asia will fall substantially. The U.N.’s ...

The worst floods in a decade may boost the number of nonperforming loans in the Kingdom’s microfinance industry in the fourth quarter, insiders said yesterday. However, those insiders said the damage done to Cambodia’s agriculture sector would not have a significant impact given the MFIs’ diversified ...

The Kingdom’s latest brewery is set to launch on November 1, introducing a new player into the growing Cambodian beer market, insiders said yesterday. The Khmer Brewery plant, a US$60 million joint venture between locally based Chip Mong Group and major international brewery manufacturer Ziemann Group, ...

Workers at a garment factory in Kampong Speu province that supplies global retailer H&M will return to work tomorrow, after more than 100 staff were hopitalised on Monday, following what they and union representatives described as a mass fainting incident. A spokesperson for H&M’s headquarters in ...

They’ve wept, they’ve yelled and they’ve prayed as they watched excavators tear down their homes, so perhaps it’s understandable that the residents of Boeung Kak lake are now turning to song. “Mom goes to protest, the children cry and sleep on the ground,” go the lyrics ...

The Minister for Agriculture yesterday appealed to buyers to address the shortage of pigs in Phnom Penh by applying for licenses that would allow them to import more livestock from neighbouring countries. An industry representative and a market expert, however, warned of the potential fallout that ...

Overseas labor recruitment agencies that send maids to Malaysia are planning to lay off about 1,000 staff members as they prepare to close down many pre-departure training centers following a growing scandal around abuses and criminal activity during the recruitment, training and sending of maids. An ...

The Agriculture Ministry is preparing to distribute rice seedlings in an effort to replace more than 220,000 hectares of rice paddy that has been destroyed by flooding. However, by the time floodwaters recede, there won’t be enough time left in the rainy season to replant ...

Cambodian debt to China now stands at $4 billion, 35 percent of last year’s gross domestic product and more than half of the country’s total outstanding debt to foreign donors, according to a senior government official. The amount of money Cambodia owes China has been growing ...

The government and the US Embassy yesterday signed off on half the nearly $65 million the US is giving Cambodia in aid this year, more than two months after Cambodia cancelled a major meeting with its foreign donors that was scheduled for November. Held roughly every ...

Experts yesterday urged the Ministry of Labor to extend the latest draft of a forthcoming trade union law to include civil servants, who are currently shut out of the law in contravention of international conventions Rong Chhun, president of both the Cambodian Confederation of Unions and ...

Some 100 former residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community yesterday delivered petitions to 10 embassies and the offices of the World Bank and European Union asking them to pressure the government into increasing the compensation for their evictions. Sam Vanna, a representative of the residents, ...

With ongoing floods causing an unprecedented $521 million in estimated damages, economists warn that poor farmers are being the hardest hit. The latest government estimate marks a roughly threefold increase from an earlier prediction of more than $161 million, which was the cost of the ...

Police said they freed one recruit from a Phnom Penh recruitment agency this weekend and were seeking to prosecute its director, adding that they were doing the same for the director of the SKMM recruitment agency, where 78 recruits were freed last week. The court ...

Reactions in Malaysian media to Cambodia’s Oct 15 ban on sending maids to Malaysia contain a mix of shame, indignation and a need to stress that most employers in Malaysia do not mistreat foreign domestic workers. “There are very few bad apples among us,” said an ...

Residents of two villages in Kandal province say police are threatening to arrest them for filing a complaint about a company they accuse of failing to fully pay them for land allegedly bought from them almost 15 years ago. Kuy Chanthorn, a resident of Kakab village ...

Another chapter in the long-running land dispute between development firm Phanimex Company and the Borei Keila community unfolded yesterday as 70 residents once again called on the district governor and Prime Minister Hun Sen to intervene on their behalf. At the heart of the dispute is ...