រដ្ឋាភិបាល
City-District to Manage Self Budget in 2012
The government, this year, intends to transfer it’s budget to individual town district authorities, and to vouchsafe into their hands from 2013 onward, aiming to push forward decentralization, said an interior ministry official. The budget, of on average US$ 35,000 per year, is in process of being transferred to the individual 193 town-district authorities across ...
Cambodia must seek new trade partners
Cambodia will no doubt look to partners other than the US and the European Union to bolster its economic growth as those key export markets continue to struggle, a senior International Monetary Fund official says. One way in which Cambodia would forge new and growing relationships with higher-income ...
City’s Transportation Workers Protest High Gasoline Prices
About 100 tuk-tuk drivers, motorcycle taxi drivers, vendors and other informal transportation workers protested against the high price of gasoline yesterday at the National Assembly, claiming the high petrol prices are cutting into their small profits. Vorn Pao, president of the Independent Democracy of Informal Economy ...
Sihanoukville port revenues up 22% on economic growth
Revenues earned by the Sihanouk Autonomous Port for the first quarter of this year jumped 22 per cent year-on-year to US$8.3 million, according to figures released yesterday by SAP. Exports of the Kingdom’s rice, garments and timber, coupled with imports of textiles, electronics and construction materials, ...
Cambodia Bets Casinos Can Boost Tourism
Cambodian developers are betting that casinos can make the tiny Southeast Asian country a bigger draw for high-spending tourists. The nation of 15 million people has more than 25 casinos, but most are small affairs in rough-and-tumble border towns that cater to hard-core Thai, Chinese and ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304750404577317094266574870.html
Hu, Cambodian PM agree to advance ties
Chinese President Hu Jintao and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed here Saturday to advance the comprehensive relations of strategic cooperation and partnership between their two countries. In a meeting, the two leaders pledged to expand mutually beneficial cooperation in all fields and to double the ...
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012HuAsiaTour/2012-03/31/content_14962294.htm
Mining revenues questioned
The Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy earned US$1.52 million in non-tax revenues in 2011, a figure that an opposition lawmaker said was far lower than the actual revenues brought in on mining licences. The intake was more than 15 per cent higher than in 2010, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032255187/Business/mining-revenues-questioned.html
Court Upholds Anti-Corruption Unit Verdict
The Court of Appeal yesterday upheld a verdict sentencing the former Pursat Provincial Court prosecutor, Tob Chan Sereivuth, and two of his bodyguards to between 15 and 19 years in prison for bribery, illegal detention and extortion. Mr. Chan Sereivuth and bodyguards Ros Samnang and Chhit ...
Assembly Approves 2010 Gov’t Spending
Following a three-hour debate at the National Assembly, lawmakers passed a draft law approving the $2.5 billion the government spent in 2010. During the debate, CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap presented a 10-page document that he said justified the $2.5 billion in spending, which was 25 percent ...
Angkor corruption alleged
An anonymous group on Saturday filed a corruption complaint with the Anti-Corruption Unit against senator Sok Kong’s Sokimex company’s management of the Angkor Wat temple complex. The complaint, dated March 10, alleges Sokimex has siphoned the majority of funds recouped from tourist entrance fees to the ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012031254983/National-news/angkor-corruption-alleged.html
Six Months on, No Response to Experts’ Sesan Dam Letter
More than two dozen fisheries experts from across the world have sent a letter of concern to the prime minister and Council of Ministers warning that if construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam goes ahead as planned, it would negatively impact hundreds of thousands ...
Borei Keila residents herald pledge of aid
Borei Keila evictees who have been sleeping in stairwells near where their houses once stood said yesterday the Phnom Penh municipal authority had promised to help them find homes. Ka Rohanny, 35, a representative of the evicted residents, told the Post Kiet Chhe, deputy administrative president ...
Gov't Bodies Ordered to Publish Prices for All State Services
The government has ordered all state institutions to start compiling a list of prices for all fee-based services so that individuals and companies can avoid informal payments, which were made illegal under the penal code last year, spokesman for the Council of Ministers Phay Siphan ...
Gov't Launches Campaign to Clean Up Cities Nationwide
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday said all of the country’s cities would compete with each other to beautify urban zones and attract more tourists in the newly devised Clean City contest. Nine Phnom Penh districts and 26 cities nationwide will be assessed on how clean ...
Budget fears as TB figures fall
Health officials and workers are concerned about budget shortages for the treatment of tuberculosis in the Kingdom as new data reveals that prevalence of the disease has declined 37 percent from 2002, officials said yesterday. Mao Tan Eang, director of the National Centre for Tuberculosis and ...
Amnesty calls for release of detained protesters
Amnesty International yesterday called on authorities to immediately release the 30 women and children from the Borei Keila community being detained against their will at Phnom Penh’s Prey Speu Social Affairs Center. “Those people never should have been arrested in the first place,” said Amnesty’s Deputy ...
Probe under way on military logging case
The Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) has launched an investigation into an October 2010 incident in which three RCAF soldiers allegedly opened fire on Forestry Administration officials who had just confiscated a haul of illegal wood, one of the officials involved said yesterday. An RCAF official, meanwhile, said ...
Senate ratifies record draft budget law
The Senate yesterday spent just 90 minutes ratifying the record $2.6 billion budget law for 2012, which will allow the government to borrow up to $1.1 billion from foreign lenders, according to a Senate statement ...
Hun Sen annuls results of bids for fishing lots
After discovering that government officials had fixed a bidding process for companies interested in operating fishing lots on the Mekong River, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday annulled the results of the bidding and rescheduled it for next year. Speaking at a plenary session at the ...
Budget pushed through
Cambodia’s 2012 budget passed through the National Assembly yesterday unopposed, without a single question asked and no parliamentary debate in a situation the government, opposition and observers all said was unfortunate. It took just over three hours for the law to be passed, 86 to 0, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011112552980/National-news/budget-pushed-through.html
Australian grant to assist railway families
The Australian government is committing $1 million to help families being forced out of their homes to make way for a railway rehabilitation project it is co-funding with the government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Australian Embassy said in a statement Friday. The embassy ...
Regional bank meets with evicted railway families
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) met yesterday with the representatives of families evicted or facing eviction to make way for an ADB-funded railway project, and defended itself against complaints that the project was pushing some of them deeper into poverty. The ADB has billed the $142 ...
Tariffs on rice slashed to help fuel exports
As part of a continuing push to bolster rice exports, the government has agreed to waive all export tariffs on milled rice and will also eliminate value-added tax (VAT) on paddy rice purchased domestically. According to a promulgation signed last month by Finance Minister Keat Chhon, ...
Kingdom, WTO call on US to drop tariffs
Both Cambodia and the World Trade Organisation this week called on the United States to follow China’s lead in promising zero-tariff treatment to Least Developed Countries. Chinese President Hu Jintao, in a speech at the G20 summit in Cannes, France, on Friday, announced China would grant ...