News

Newly approved plans by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to fix mistakes it made on a $143 million railway project appear to water down recommendations proposed by the Bank’s own review panel, and could impose the costs of the plan on the very families who ...

In May of 2010, just four days after their family was resettled in Battambang province, two children, accompanied by their sister-in-law, walked to a pond. Stories differ as to why they were there. Rights groups say they went to bathe and collect water. Police claim ...

Work on a $143 million donor project to renovate the country’s creaking railway system, which is already over budget and years behind schedule, is now indefinitely postponed due to a lack of funds, with more than 300 km of rail still to be laid, a ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has for the first time admitted to major flaws in its efforts to protect the roughly 4,000 families losing land to a $143 million project it is funding to rehabilitate Cambodia’s dilapidated railway system. On Friday, the ADB said it would ...

The Education Ministry and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said Monday that they had begun a joint investigation into the misappropriation of textbooks intended for secondary school students under an ADB-funded scheme. Two NGOs on Thursday released results of an investigation into 33 secondary schools, which ...

School textbooks paid for by the Asian Development Bank have been routed to district education offices, some of which are charging schools for books that are supposed to be free, an NGO investigation has found. The textbooks on Khmer literature, maths, geography, morality and science were ...

The Asean Economic Community (AEC) will cut red tape and allow freer trade between the bloc’s 10 member states. But many companies in the region aren’t even aware of the AEC blueprint, a sobering report from the Asia Development Bank has found. The bank also ...

A pilot cashew-peeling factory in Kampong Thom province aims to make business easier for farmers who have traditionally relied upon sending their raw harvest elsewhere for processing. With $130,000 from the Asia Development Bank, the building went up in May on 3,600 square metres in Kampong ...

Cambodia’s economy is expected to maintain the robust growth of over 7 percent this year even though the country is still trapped in political dispute and recovering from the aftermath of recent floods, senior officials and bankers said. But some analysts predicted that political trouble, coupled ...

Asian Development Bank (ADB), will conduct a press tour in Kampong Thom province in Cambodia to evaluate and report on how the “Improving Market Access for the Poor in Central Cambodia Project” is helping to increase household incomes and create jobs for poor communities in ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a 100 million USD aid package to support the development of tourism infrastructure in the three Mekong River countries of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The decision was made at the annual meeting on tourism development of the Greater Mekong ...

Germany has pledged $64 million in aid donations to Cambodia for this year and next, amounting to a “substantial increase” over the past two years of official German assistance to the country, the German Embassy announced on Wednesday. Germany’s new aid package, the majority of which—$54 ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Government of Australia are expanding access to economical and reliable energy for rural Cambodian households, including through the promotion of cookstoves in Svay Rieng and Kampong Cham provinces. A $6.1 million Australian Aid grant, administered by ADB, will finance ...

Asian Development Bank (ADB) seeks cooperation with Cambodia’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) to fight against corruption in projects that ADB funds. In a meeting Saturday between Nuon Sothimon, ACU’s department chief of juridical affairs and Lorraine Wang-Reyes, ADB’s principal integrity specialist, they discussed cooperation in combating ...

Against the backdrop of high electricity costs and energy imports, Cambodian businesses could save millions of dollars annually by implementing energy-efficient business practices, insiders said yesterday. “It is clear that energy efficiency has multiple benefits, not only to the tourism sector but also other economic sectors ...

Growth in tourism is the key driver that is pushing up the value of Cambodia’s service sector, according to the Asian Development Bank report released last week. But to reach its full potential the country still needs to harness resources and tackle the problems that are ...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday said it expects Cambodia’s economy to grow by 7 percent this year, fueled mostly by the garment, tourism and construction sectors, though risks such as extreme weather and labor market instabilities could cause growth to fluctuate. The IMF also ...

Cambodia is benefiting from a steadily growing service sector, but it needs to clear a number of obstacles to harness the sector’s potential, said a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) report released on Tuesday. The report, entitled Developing the Service Sector as an Engine of Growth ...

The Cambodian National Petroleum Authority (CNPA), formerly overseen by the Council of Ministers, will be integrated into the Ministry of Mines and Energy, according to senior CPP officials, the latest cut to the vast portfolio of government bodies controlled by Deputy Prime Minister Sok An. Since ...

Cambodia’s newly appointed minister of commerce said Thursday that he plans to reform the country’s economy ahead of Cambodia’s entrance into the Asean Economic Community (AEC) 2015, though he and other officials did not say how they plan to accomplish that goal. Speaking to reporters on ...

The volume of cargo shipments going through the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port (PAS), the biggest deep-water port in Cambodia, saw a 16 per cent year-on-year increase in the first nine months of this year, data released by the port on Friday show. About 2.27 million tonnes of ...

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 ...

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 ...