Economy and commerce

While tourism numbers in Cambodia are growing rapidly, visitors might increasingly have a hard time finding a restaurant to their liking since the country is experiencing a shortage of qualified personnel, especially waiters and chefs, accordingly to the Cambodia Restaurant Association. “The tourism industry needs at ...

One of Japan’s biggest banks, Sumimoto Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) signed agreement with Acleda Bank to share market data and banking services. The deal will give Japanese investors information on the economy and offer other banking services and is aimed at improving bilateral trade and investment. The deal would ...

Cambodia’s General Department of Customs and Excise will begin certifying firms it deems trustworthy so that their products will have easier passage across the country’s borders, officials have said. The government is working on a program to provide “authorized economic operators” or “AEO” status on approved ...

Danish brewer Carlsberg has vowed to improve the working conditions of Angkor and Carlsberg beer promoters in Cambodia as it tries to stamp out coerced workplace drinking. The company announced late last week it had joined forces with the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) to ...

More than 2,000 garment factory workers protested Saturday and plan to strike today in support of union organizers who face prosecution in court for alleged “incitement” over demonstrations at the plant, a union representative said yesterday. The workers at Ocean Garment factory began demonstrating on Aug. ...

The secong Cambodia International Textile and Garment Exhibition from August 17 to 20 aimed to boost the Kingdom’s all-important garment sector by highlighting high-tech machinery which could boost factories’ productivity and bottom lines. Over 2,700 square meters at the Diamond Island Convention and Exhibition Center, the ...

After a day sewing, treating fabrics and ironing, workers steam out of the Maurea Garment Factory in a suburb of Phnom Penh. Unilke some other factories, this one doesn’t have to deal with work slowdowns due to electricity outages of high monthly energy bills since ...

About 50 villagers in Kandal province protested yesterday in an attempt to halt the activities of a Vietnamese sand-dredging company, which they said has caused a huge swath of their land to slide into the Mekong River. Residents of Kien Svay district’s Koh Prak village said ...

For the first time since the bourse went alive in April, no trading took place on the Cambodian Securities Exchange on Friday. The share price of the bourse’s sole listing, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA), remained flat at 6,450 riel ($1.58) at the end ...

Social enterprise may be more than just a buzzword if last Saturday’s attendance at Cambodia’s second-ever conference on the matter was anything to judge by. The 350 person-plus crowd of attendees consisted predominately of Cambodians, for whom doing business appears to be about more than merely ...

The vision regional leaders have for an ASEAN Economic Community by 2015 may become clearer after this week’s Economic Ministers meeting in Siem Reap, but not everyone has a rose-coloured view of what such integration might mean for Cambodia. Students who have not mastered the ...

China’s Export-Import Bank officials proposed to provide loans of up to US$70 million for rice milling in an effort to aid Cambodia’s efforts to export a million tonnes of rice by 2015, government officials said yesterday. The bank’s officials visited Cambodia last week to met with Cambodian ...

Southeast Asian nations must redouble efforts to bridge development gaps which threaten the region’s efforts to create an EU-style single market, Cambodia’s prime minister said Monday. Building an ASEAN economic community by 2015 is the “top priority”, Hun Sen said as he opened the annual ...

Francis Gurry, director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), on Monday pledged to continue helping Cambodia in formalizing and strengthening laws on intellectual property Meanwhile, Hun Sen highly appreciated the WIPO for its assisting Cambodia in the sector, saying that since Cambodia became a member ...

Indonesia was involved in advanced talks in Cambodia during the late 1980s. Known as the Jakarta Informal Meeting, Indonesia was trying to help put an end to Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia, in what some observers called the Third Indochina War (1978-91). Despite these close ties, ...

Economic ministers from the 10 ASEAN countries are meeting in Siem Reap, Cambodia on Monday to discuss the progress in regional economic integration initiatives. They will also focus on working towards establishing an ASEAN Economic Community by 2015.. ...

The Bank of Thailand (BOT) on August 25 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Exchange of Banking Supervision Information with the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC), the regulator of financial institutions in Cambodia. The MoU provides a formal basis for banking supervisory cooperation between the ...

United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk will be in Siem Reap, Cambodia, August 30-31, to participate in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Ministers’ meeting and the ASEAN-U.S. Business Summit. The ten ASEAN countries are key economic and strategic partners for the United States, ...

The 44th economic ministers (AEM) meeting and related meetings will be held from 25 August-1 September, 2012 in Siem Reap province. The ministers will focus on the economic community in 2015 and boost economic council to move forward  because this community is going smoother than other two ...

The 10th High Quality Vietnamese Products and Exports trade fair opened yesterday in the Cambodian capital city of Phnom Penh. It has attracted around 150 firms who have  set up 250 booths to display more than 2,000 products, including electronics, consumer goods, stationary, books, construction materials, ...

Cambodians for Resource Revenue Transparency (CRRT) wrote a letter to Ms. Elizabeth M. Murphy, Secretary of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 7, 2012 to back up PWYP’s recommendations and to encourage the Commission to define the “Project” in relation to each lease, license ...

In line with Royal Government policy determining tourism as the Green Gold, 2011 is the year that we commenced mainstreaming the green tourism concept to all stakeholders. Cambodia started some new initiative to inspire green tourism in the country. “The Clean and Green Concept is basically ...

(UN ESCAP Strategic Communications and Advocacy Section)- “Investing in women’s entrepreneurial leadership, and the empowerment of women, is smart economics- which is why women’s empowerment is one of the most important development priorities for the countries of Asia and the Pacifc,” said Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, ...

Trade between Vietnam and Cambodia exceeded US$1.9 billion dollars in the first seven months of this year, the High Quality Vietnamese Goods Business Association said yesterday. Speaking at a news conference, an association official said Vietnamese exports to Cambodia came to $1.6 billion in the seven ...