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The Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME) will begin promoting the Institute of Standards of Cambodia (ISC) certifications by the end of 2012 in an effort to educate people about certified goods, according to ministry officials. The program is in order to boost consumer confidence ...

Police clashed with strikers as thousands of garment workers from factories that sell to Levi’s and Gap were blocked as they marched from Kandal province towards the capital yesterday, union representatives said. The 4,000-strong group’s march, as threatened by Cambodian Confederation of Trade Unions president Rong ...

Bonna Realty Group will prepare to list on the Cambodia Securities Exchange, the company’s president said this week. The real estate firm joins a small but growing group of private companies that say they are gearing up for initial public offerings on the new exchange. ...

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. ...

About 2,000 workers at a factory supplying clothes to U.S. brands Levi Strauss, Gap and Old Navy were stopped by security forces yesterday as they attempted to march from Kandal province to the Ministry of Labor to protest for severance payments and additional benefits. Protests at ...

The government will drop subsidies for high electricity use, after the Electricity Authority of Cambodia (EAC) reported losses of US$3 million between January and May this year. Households consuming more than 200 KW/h per month will no longer receive a 100 to 200 riel per KW/h ...

Garment factory owners have agreed to provide workers with an additional $9 in monthly benefits for transportation, housing and attendance in order to reduce growing protests in the sector, Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC) officials said yesterday. “We will provide $3 in attendance bonuses and ...

Union leaders yesterday rejected a proposal from Cambodian garment makers to provide US$9 a month for a worker’s housing and transport fees, demanding an additional $1. The benefits were announced last week after unions said they would lead a large-scale protest ...

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 ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ latest list of economic land concessions reveals some peculiar discrepancies with known records of ELCs. Some that have recently been granted are missing, while others known to have been cancelled remain. The June 8 MAFF list makes no mention ...

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 ...

Over 300 Buddhist monks and Cambodian residents who live along Mekong River in Kampong Cham province, about 120km from Phnom Penh, gathered in the provincial town to demand for Laos to halt the construction of Xayaburi dam. “We want the Lao government to stop the construction of Xayaburi dam because it will affect the ...

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 ...

Bun Chhorn and Sok Tong – fugitives accused of orchestrating a “secessionist plot” in Kratie province – are refusing to admit their guilt, and will hold a press conference Friday in Phnom Penh to say as much, despite Hun Sen’s recent promise to drop their ...

Homeless Borei Keila evictees who have been living in tents surrounded by garbage since authorities bulldozed their homes in January pleaded outside Phnom Penh Municipal Hall for housing yesterday. Representative Chhay Kimhorn said the families could no longer stand living in tents and stairwells infested with ...

An EU scheme to boost trade with developing nations is fuelling land grabs in Cambodia, activists say, with thousands evicted from their property to make way for a booming sugar industry. Campaigners are taking their fight to European supermarkets, encouraging a boycott of Cambodian sugar, which ...

After years of futile protests demanding their land back, villagers forcibly evicted by sugarcane plantations connected to CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat launched a boycott campaign yesterday targeting the international firms that sell his sugar. Thousands of families accuse the senator’s plantations of forcing them off ...

The European Union should immediately remove trade preferences it gives to Cambodian sugar companies accused of human-rights violations including land grabs, representatives of the affected communities told a press conference in Phnom Penh yesterday. Community representatives from Koh Kong, Kampong Speu and Oddar Meanchey provinces said ...

More than 170 villagers in Banteay Meanchey province locked in a land dispute with a local company protested yesterday in front of the provincial hall, seeking land titles in compliance with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recent titling project. The families say they had been granted a ...

State power company Electricite du Cambodge (EDC) plans to increase the price of electricity to make up for a drop in revenue this year, according to a Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy official. “This year, oil prices went up, which meant the EDC did not ...

The number of incoming business people from Wenzhou, a Chinese coastal city of three million known for manufacturing, has grown markedly in recent years. So much, in fact, that Wezhou opened an official chamber of commerce in Phnom Penh last week. Labour and land costs on China’s ...

Twelve of the 29 excavators seized by military police in Kompong Thom province during Monday’s military police raids on illegal Tonle Sap reservoirs were confiscated from a farming collective run by a newly elected CPP commune chief. Peanh Poul, director of the Dry Rice Season Community, ...