Aviation in the Kingdom soaring with new flights and airport plans
Cambodian aviation continues its ascent with the Oct. 1 launch of Singaporean low-cost carrier Tiger Airway’s daily direct service to Phnom Penh, ongoing airport expansions and the announcement of several new airport projects. Currently, there are more than 20 international airlines offering service to Cambodia for a ...
Waste to Watt
In an outbuilding at Lok Sear’s rice milling operation in Kandal province, two four-meter-high cylindrical machines vibrate and hum as the occasional chicken and duck pecks near the concrete blocks holding them up. While they do both feature a thinck band of aluminium around their ...
Tourism Sector Faces Dearth of Skilled Labor
With the number of tourists visiting the country increasing rapidly, hotels are coming under strain due to lack of skilled chefs and waiters in the industry, according to hotel managers. In the first six months of 2012, international visitors reached 1.75 million, a 26.8 percent ...
Railway Evictees Tussle With High Debt Levels
Adding to a growing body of research into the flaws of Cambodia’s $142 million railway rehabilitation project, a report published yesterday said soaring debt levels are crippling families forcibly relocated by the project. In the report by land rights organization Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), researchers tracked ...
Signs point to more diverse investment projects in Cambodia
The effects of the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 on the Cambodian economy showed how perilous having a narrow economic base can be. Since the Kingdom’s economy is dependent on a few “pillars”-garments, construction, tourism and agriculture-downturns in any of those sectors can ...
Corporate: China powers its way through Cambodia
In the hilly wilderness across southwestern Cambodia, the foundations of the country’s strengthening bonds with China are taking root. It is there that large dams supported by Chinese money are being built to literally bring the impoverished Southeast Asian nation out of darkness. The largest of ...
http://www.hydroworld.com/news/2013/02/18/corporate-china-powers-its-way-through-cambodia.html
Recent Development and Economic Outlook
The UN’s assessment suggests that Cambodia is one of the top five countries that have made significant progress toward meeting its MDGs by 2015. The poverty rate has dropped dramatically from 47.50 percent in 1993 to 34.70 percent in 2004 and 23 percent in 2011, ...
Strongman's hand in BHP deal
A BHP Billiton mining deal being investigated for alleged corruption was personally overseen by Cambodian strongman Hun Sen, diplomatic cables reveal. The miner’s aborted attempt to establish a bauxite mine in Cambodia, and its hospitality program for Chinese officials at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, are at ...
http://www.smh.com.au/national/strongmans-hand-in-bhp-deal-20130325-2gqae.html
Wary of China, Companies Head to Cambodia
Tiffany & Company is quietly building a diamond-polishing factory in Cambodia, a country popularly associated more with killing fields and land mines than baubles. Some of Japan’s biggest manufacturers are also rushing to set up operations in Phnom Penh to make wiring harnesses for cars and ...
World Bank Says Credit Growth Still a Risk
The World Bank has warned that the rapid growth of lending by Cambodia’s Banks is still a concern, despite a recent slow-down in credit disbursals. “Credit growth, which has been driven largely by wholesale and retail financing, and starting in 2011 agriculture financing, has eased to ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/business/world-bank-says-credit-growth-still-a-risk-20690/
Trafficked numbers rising
Their stories have become all too familiar – Cambodian fishermen enslaved on fishing boats after being promised lucrative jobs overseas. They’re also becoming increasingly common. Anti-trafficking NGOs told the Post this week that they have noticed an exponential increase in the number of trafficking complaints from ...
Danson Cheong
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013052265773/National/trafficked-numbers-rising.html
Cambodia scores high marks for renewable energy
Cambodia’s share of modern biomass in total energy consumption is among the highest in the world, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Bank and the International Energy Agency. The report also found that growth in Cambodia’s dependence on renewable energy excluding traditional biomass ...
http://www.thecambodiaherald.com/cambodia/detail/1?page=15&token=MjRiYTU0NzYyNTR
Troubles for Tonlesap Air
About two months after Phnom Penh-based Tonlesap Airlines suspended its chartered flights, the local carrier’s future seems as cloudy as ever. Vann Chanty, the director of air transport with Cambodia’s State Secretariat of Civil Aviation, said yesterday that the airline had not resumed operations and that ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013061766300/Business/troubles-for-tonlesap-air.html
Tax revenue sees a 27 per cent jump
The Kingdom’s tax revenue increased 27.85 per cent in the first two months compared to a year earlier, a figure the opposition party said is low due to corruption and tax cheats. According to the data from the General Department of Taxation (GDT), total tax revenue ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013032864735/Business/tax-revenue-sees-a-27-per-cent-jump.html
The price of land development in Cambodia
Phnom Penh, a city once fabled for its stately colonial buildings and boulevards, and its serene riverside setting, is becoming a city of glaring contrasts. An economy left in ruins by the years of war and violent revolution in the 1970s and 80s grew at a ...
Bribes remain rampant: TI
Despite facing a rampant graft problem that has seen Cambodians paying bribes far more often than their regional neighbors, they have growing faith in the government’s ability to fight it, a Transparency International survey has found. TI’s 2013 Global Corruption Barometer, which measures perceptions of corruption ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/bribes-remain-rampant-survey
Some Return After Eviction From Coastal Resort Development
Thousands of people have been evicted from their homes to make way for a Chinese development in Koh Kong province. But some of the families have returned to their land, leaving a relocation site they say was insufficient for their needs. For families like those of ...
Social media shows election day muscle
Illustrating a rapidly changing information network in Cambodia, social media played a major role yesterday, as images and videos that appeared to depict fraudulent election activity went viral on Facebook and Twitter. Videos of voters washing off the supposedly indelible security ink used to identify those ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/social-media-shows-election-day-muscle
Solar panels see sunny times ahead
Officials and business people say solar panels are gaining in popularity in rural areas, where the power grid does not reach. Mao Sangat, director of Solar Energy Cambodia, told the Post yesterday that his company saw increases of installation of solar power systems for families whose ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013052165730/Business/solar-panels-see-sunny-times-ahead.html
Informal lending still thriving
The expanding banking sector and the spread of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in rural areas have failed to elbow informal, unlicensed money lending out of the market, industry experts say. Fast and easy access to money – as well as the fear of “losing face” by borrowing ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013070266598/Business/informal-lending-still-thriving.html