News

The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday that it plans to raise its annual production of organic vegetables from 120 tons to 600 tons by the end of 2015. Lim Sokun Darun, program coordinator at Cedac, said that the decision to ...

The government said yesterday that a gold mine in Kompong Cham province that has damaged about 1 square km of land with chemical waste would cost at least $4 million to clean up. Speaking at a workshop in Phnom Penh on revenue transparency, Sim Sisokhaly, director ...

Workers will begin clearing forestland in Stung Treng province as early as next week in preparation for the controversial 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam, district officials and villagers said yesterday. The hydropower project, funded by Vietnam Electricity (EVN), will flood tens of thousands of hectares of ...

The number of criminal charges meted out to villagers embroiled in land disputes rose by more than 50 percent in 2011 compared to the previous year, according to figures released by the rights group Adhoc yesterday. The rights group found that the courts charged 475 villagers ...

Violence erupted yesterday in Kratie province’s Snuol district where six people were shot and injured when RCAF soldiers working for a rubber company opened fire on a crowd of villagers who were trying to stop the company from clearing land in the area, police and ...

Two more Vietnamese banks have announced they will apply for licences to operate in Cambodia, according to media reports. If accepted, Maritime Bank and Saigon-Hanoi Commercial Bank (SHB) would bring the number of Vietnamese banks in Cambodia to six, National Bank of Cambodia officials said yesterday. Experts ...

The World Bank yesterday predicted gross domestic product to grow 6.5 percent this year, though it said that economic conditions could sour if the economies of Cambodia’s largest export markets in the US and Europe deteriorate. In an economic report outlining prospects for all of the ...

Faced with continued illegal logging in Prey Long forest, villagers in Kompong Thom province’s Sandan district once again took the initiative to seize a large haul of illegal timber from local loggers. Villagers, however, said that local officials are complicit in the logging ring and ...

More than 11,000 families were affected by government-granted economic land concessions in 2011, nearly 3,000 more families than were affected the previous year, according to figures released yesterday by local rights group Licadho. A total of more than 2 million hectares of the country’s forests and ...

Buoyed by strong demand from the economies of Europe and North America, the total amount of garment, shoe and textile exports that left Cambodia last year was on target to surpass the $4 billion mark, dwarfing 2010’s total of $2.88 billion, the Garment Manufacturers Association ...

The owner of development firm Phan Imex Company said yesterday that 64 families from the capital’s Borei Keila community who were demanding compensation for houses demolished on January 3 did not have the documents to prove they had owned a house on the site. Phan Imex ...

Cambodia’s biggest solar power initiative to date – expected to provide electricity to 12,000 households in off-grid areas – will be completed on January 31, according to officials involved with the project. Yiang Tal, chief of administration at the Rural Electrification Fund, said more than 10,000 ...

The Cambodia Securities Exchange may launch as soon as March or April, according to an official at the Korea Exchange, the Kingdom’s partner in launching its stock market. Final preparations for the CSX’s  initial public offerings should be complete at that time, Pat Gil-soo, senior vice-president ...

Whether it is dancing pop stars or plays on national pride, dramatically increasing budgets for beer advertising took Cambodia’s TV sets and public spaces by storm in 2011. Beer advertising surged 164 per cent year-on-year in 2011, according to data from Indochina Research Ltd, making it ...

In a sign of “improving” relations between Cambodia and the United States, the Kingdom will host US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this year, officials confirmed yesterday. The visit would be the first by a sitting US president. Joseph Yun, the US ...

Asia Golden Rice (AGR), Thailand’s second-largest rice exporter, will invest $47 million to build milling plants in Cambodia capable of processing up to 1 million tons of rice per year, according to a company representative and reports from the Thai news media yesterday. “This will be ...

The government has granted China’s Xinwei Telecom a license to become the country’s tenth mobile phone operator and the second firm to roll out so-called 4G technology, the fastest and most advanced network currently available on the market. Those in the telecommunications industry said that the ...

About 200 villagers, who have been embroiled in a long-running land dispute with the well-connected agro-business Pheapimex over a 316,000-hectare economic land concession in Pursat province, staged a protest yesterday against the company’s continued efforts to clear their farmland. The protests came just three days after ...

Nearly 2,000 workers at a Kandal province garment factory had returned to work on Saturday and 6,000 more planned to return today after nearly three weeks of strikes, company and union representatives said yesterday. Yung Wah Factory administrative director Ing Minchuan confirmed yesterday that the roughly ...

The Ministry of Land Management is giving a brief reprieve to non-government groups and donor partners who missed yesterday’s deadline to comment on a draft sub-decree aiming to guide and regulate the country’s urban development. After making the Sub-Decree on Urban Planning and Town Areas public ...

Authorities in Phnom Penh’s Dangkao district have ordered a land excavation company to stop digging an enormous quarry in Prek Kampoes commune that villagers claim has damaged surrounding rice paddies. Last Wednesday, about 100 villagers blocked National Road 2, burning car tires in protest against the ...

Less than two weeks after the Tonle Sap Authority reportedly installed a ban on large-scale fish exports, Prime Minister Hun Sen declined to endorse the order and re-opened exports, officials said yesterday. Chan Youttha, secretary-general of the Tonle Sap Authority, said it had prepared a report ...

A survey by Cambodian microfinancers showed debtors were better off in several respects than those who didn’t borrow from the institutions, MFI officials claimed. Responding to recent concerns over the role of microfinance institutions in creating poverty and loss of property in the Kingdom, the Cambodia ...

Finance Minister Keat Chhon joined officials of the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) yesterday to conduct another day of mock trading of stocks ahead of the still-unknown launch of actual operations at the bourse, which opened in July but has yet to see a single stock ...