Canadia, Gov't Look to Soothe Tax Process
With the deadline to pay annual property taxes rapidly approaching, hundreds of Phnom Penh homeowners queued this week at Canadia Bank’s headquarters on Monivong Boulevard to pay their tax bills in relative comfort, and avoid long visits to district and municipal taxation offices. Canadia Bank signed ...
Anniversary Marked With Fiery Demonstration
Residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood burned straw effigies symbolizing corrupt government officials yesterday to mark the one-year anniversary of the demolition of eight homes at the contested site. Roughly 100 protesters gathered at the site of the demolitions and set fire to eight scarecrow-like effigies- one ...
Koomkin bank takes Camko City to court
The foreign commercial arbitration case between South Korean Kookmin Bank and World City Asset Management and World City, two real-estate development firms, has been received by the Cambodian Court of Appeals. World City Asset Management received a loan from Kookmin bank in Korea in 2007 to ...
Land abuses 'threaten stability'
Cambodia’s economic land concession (ELC) policies are hindering development far more than helping it and beginning to erode the country’s hard-won stability, Cambodia’s special rapporteur warned yesterday. “As I have noted in relation to other sectors in Cambodia, the existence of the legal framework on paper ...
Oxfam urges freeze of land investments
Global development group Oxfam on Wednesday called on the World Bank to suspend financing for large-scale land acquisitions to ensure that its practices do not encourage foreign land grabs in developing countries. Oxfam urged Jim Yong Kim, the lender’s new president, to announce a six-month moratorium ...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/worldbank-oxfam-land-idUSL1E8L2LKF20121004
Rights Activist Denies Phnom Penh Move Is Due to Charges
A Ratanakkiri-based human rights worker charged by the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court with inciting ethnic minority villagers to protest during a 2009 land dispute with a private agro-industry company has been transferred to work in Phnom Penh. Pen Bonnar, Ratanakkiri provincial coordinator for Adhoc , said yesterday ...
Obama steers US towards focus on Asia
On his first foreign trip since Tuesday’s election, US President Barack Obama is planning a historic visit to encourage reforms in Myanmar – seen as a key success during his first term – and he’ll also go to Thailand and Cambodia. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ...
Embattled villagers fight on
First, agricultural company DM group displaced them, now a recently arrived commercial farmer has threatened their lives and chased them off their new land, said representatives of 12 families engaged in a long-standing land dispute in Ratanakkiri province. On Wednesday, the 12 Tampuon ethnic minority families ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013011160746/National/embattled-villagers-fight-on.html
Minh: Connectivity is key to Asean's tourism plans
Connectivity is crucial to the process of building the Asean Community, and ties in with the effort to market the region as a single tourist destination, the grouping’s chief said. “Asean is in the process of building the Asean Community, and in the process of building ...
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/aec/Minh-Connectivity-is-key-to-Aseans-tourism-plans-30198610.html
Chut Wutty investigation wraps following shooting charge
An unintentional murder charge handed to security guard Ran Boroth on Friday for allegedly killing military police officer In Rattana has left rights groups asking why officials initially claimed the deceased man had committed suicide. Only three days after it was established by Prime Minister Hun ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012050755993/National-news/case-closed-in-shooting.html
Manufacturers Raise Garment Workers’ Pay
Manufacturers in Cambodia yesterday agreed to increase the monthly wage of garment workers by $7 per month by providing them with additional allowances for transportation and housing, bringing the minimum wage packet taken home every month to $73. The raise occurred as the number of strikes ...
Southeast Asian Rice Exporters Eye Cartel to Boost Prices
Southeast Asia’s rice-exporting nations are in talks to create a formal alliance aimed at boosting prices and increasing export revenues, a move that could cause tensions with rice-importing nations. An alliance of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar will aim to share information and cooperate ...
Cambodia eyes domestic oil production, refinery for energy security: official
Cambodia is working on three fronts to improve its energy security and supply, including the development of its first oil-producing asset, looking for ways to resolve a disagreement over disputed territory in the Gulf of Thailand, and studying the economic viability of building its own ...
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/7105582
Living with the enemy
Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted. While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families ...
Cambodia to Resume International Adoptions on January 1
Cambodia will allow inter-country adoptions to resume from January 1 next year, four years after the government stopped adoptions amid claims of corruption and baby selling, government officials confirmed yesterday. Speaking after a meeting with Susan Jacobs, the U.S. State Department’s special adviser on children’s issues, Secretary of ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/cambodia-to-resume-international-adoptions-on-january-1-4934/
Companies to face court for illegal logging, land clearing
In what’s believed to be an unprecedented move, the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has ordered two companies holding economic land concessions to face court questioning on accusations of illegal logging and land clearing. Deputy prosecutor Ros Saram said he summonsed Vietnamese-owned Company 72 last week and will ...
Illegal Logging a Challenge for Carbon Trading
A Ministry of Agriculture official said yesterday he was aware of allegations of illegal logging by Royal Cambodian Armed Forces soldiers within protected community forests in Oddar Meanchey province and was looking into it. “I am following this case, but I haven’t received their petition yet,” ...
Group Starts Online Petition to Stop Land Dispute Violence
Hoping to end the cycle of violence in land disputes in Cambodia, and to garner public support for people who are the victims of land grabbing, five concerned citizens held a press conference Friday to announce the launch of their own online petition whose results ...
New Online Service Launched to Smooth Tax Payment
In a bid to ease the collection of the recently introduced tax on properties worth more than $25,000, The Ministry of Finance has launched an online service to help people get the forms they need to pay the tax. In a statement released last week, the ministry said ...
Investors from Korea relocate to Cambodia
Korean investors are relocating labour-intensive businesses to countries such as Cambodia after Indonesia raised its minimum wage. A number of Korean investors had closed their Indonesian factories and relocated to other countries in the region because their requests for minimum-wage exemption had been refused, The Jakarta ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013020761220/Business/investors-from-korea-relocate-to-cambodia.html