News

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Phnom Penh today for diplomatic and business talks with China and ASEAN’s 10 member states, but rights groups and opposition parties are counting on the state of human rights in Cambodia to be a top priority as ...

Canada is willing to build close ties with Cambodia and other ASEAN member states in politics, trade and investment, said Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird on Wednesday. John said that Canada’s International Trade Minister Ed Fast will make a visit to Cambodia next month to ...

Jeremy Browne, UK foreign office minister, told officials in Cambodia during a two-day visit that despite the current problems the European Union is having with its currency union and economies, ASEAN should not be discouraged from pursuing closer economic and even political coordination within the 1.0-member bloc. Speaking at the Council of Ministers in Phnom ...

Charles Cheo, managing director of Forte Insurance, is sanguine on the growth prospects of Cambodia’s US$30 million general insurance market, even though there are five other general insurers competing against Forte, and three new life insurers entering the market. Forte established a presence in Cambodia in ...

Cambodia’s tourism sector has emerged from a “mystery disease” scare unscathed, industry insiders said yesterday, although some regional health authorities noted what the World Health Organisation called an outbreak of Enterovirus-71 (EV-71), which has killed at least 52 children in the Kingdom. “The disease has only ...

Access to the region’s largest collective financial resource, the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund, could be easier than expected for Cambodia, according to an Asian Development Bank economist. Initiated in May, the fund is expected to lend up to US$4 billion and leverage up to $13 billion for ...

Less than four months after suspending work on Cambodia’s dilapidated railway network, Toll Royal Railways (TRR), the network’s operator, has informed the government that it will recommence transporting construction materials needed to build the southern line on Aug. 1, company officials said yesterday. The decision to ...

Prasac, a leading micro-finance institution in Cambodia, had increased its registered capital from US$3.8 million to $20 million in preparation for its transformation into a commercial bank by 2014, the institution said yesterday. “The registration requirement of $37.5 million is a very small amount to ...

There were scenes of jubilation in Cambodia’s capital last month when a group of 13 imprisoned women – including a 72-year-old grandmother – was set free by an appeal court. The women were arrested in May during peaceful demonstrations against the forced eviction of thousands ...

While Cambodia has made remarkable gains economically over the past decade and more-the Kingdom’s poverty level fell from 47 percent in 1994 to 25 percent this year-there are still some stubborn areas of underperformance. One is the issue of food security. While in recent years, the country has largely been able to produce ...

Cambodia and Thailand’s financial exposure to Europe would make the two counties the most vulnerable regionally, an ANZ Bank report showed. The Kingdom’s exports and tourism sectors were on increasingly unstable ground as Europe’s debt crisis advanced. ...

A pledge in mid-June by Cambodia and Vietnam to increase bilateral trade by more than US$2.5 billion by 2015 may lead to decreased trade with Thailand, market analysts have said. The pledge made by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Tan Dung ...

The family hotpot-style restaurant Master Suki Soup has opened its ninth restaurant in Cambodia, on Sothearos Boulevard adjacent to Hun Sen Park, with the newly relocated German Fresh Beer brew pub and German menu upstairs. The soft opening took place on Thursday night as Master Suki ...

It’s after midnight in Sihanoukville and British teenagers are clogging the walkways, pushing past one another to drain free shots at the bars. In Kep, elderly French tourists sun themselves at the upscale Sailing Club while Spaniards and Germans eye the offerings at Phnom Penh’s Central Market. In spite of the growing fears ...

Mr. Luu Meng, president of hotel association in Cambodia said this week that Cambodia needs to develop tourism skills to compete with other countries in the ASEAN region as the kingdom has more opportunity to attract foreign visitors. “Our skills of hospitality are limited in the ...

Cambodia’s Soma Group yesterday signed a US$3-million deal with Indian company Ankur Scientific, the largest biomass-to-energy company in India, to construct a 1.5-megawatt rice husk power plant in Kampong Cham province. ...

Cambodia, as one of the least developed countries and one of the poorest in the Greater Mekong Subregion, is an active participant in migration within the country, within the region and between the subregion and other regions. According to National Institute of Statistics in 2008, 26.52 percent of the Cambodian population ...

Cambodia and Vietnam will send a letter signed by the prime ministers of both countries to demand that Laos and Thailand halt the construction of a dam on the mainstream Mekong River in Laos, an official from the Cambodian National Mekong Committee said yesterday. The decision ...

Cambodia and Vietnam will write a joint letter to the Lao and Thai governments urging that construction of the Xayaburi dam, in northern Laos, be halted, a spokesman for the government’s Mekong committee said yesterday. Minister of Water Resources Lim Kean Hor met with Vietnam’s Minister ...

At one time, palm oil production stirred a lot of excitement in Cambodia. Perhaps hoping to follow in the footsteps of palm oil giants Malaysia or Indonesia, more than 10 firms in Cambodia registered for land concessions for palm cultivation around a decade ago. Today, there is one left. The others decided palm ...

As a delegation of US business owners prepares to travel to Cambodia with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, analysts say they will be tough to court, given Cambodia’s lack of law enforcement. “Investors don’t bring guns, they don’t bring bodyguards—they bring money to invest,” said ...

Cambodia will begin the creation of its first Marine Protected Area (MPA) this year, covering some 300 square kilometres of coral-rich seas around islands of Koh Rong and Koh Rong Samloem in the Gulf of Thailand. This follows a successful two-year scientific survey of the area ...

Two global life insurers are opening offices in Cambodia, one of Southeast Asia’s few untapped insurance markets, as they strengthen their foothold in a region that could eventually be a key driver of revenue growth. Britain’s No. 1 insurer Prudential said on Monday it won in-principle ...

The United States has expressed its commitment to the success of next week’s 19th ASEAN Regional Forum, which will be held in Phnom Penh, while British Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne said on the same day that the United Kingdom plans to strengthen its relationship ...