The Phnom Penh Post

The steep increase in Angkor Wat ticket prices on February 1 did not discourage tourists from visiting the country’s chief tourist draw, as some feared, but it also did not reap any significant material gains for the government coffers, new data shows. ...

An illegal logger lost a foot to an anti-personnel mine in Preah Vihear province near the border with Thailand on Saturday while searching for rosewood. ...

After claiming for weeks that a controversial party slogan was not actually official, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party decided to remove the phrase from its official party platform yesterday in an attempt at “reconciliation”. ...

According to the report, the number of people living in rural areas who had access to clean water increased from half in 2015 to 53 percent in 2016, while access to sanitation, such as proper toilets, increased nearly 10 percent to 56 percent. ...

The state-owned enterprise that operates Cambodia’s only deep-sea port is aiming to raise $27 million by floating a 25 percent stake on the Kingdom’s stock market, a company executive said yesterday. ...

The European Union is expected to enter Kampong Speu palm sugar into its registry of protected geographical indicators (GI) by July following a push by the Cambodian government to protect the specialty food product in one of its biggest markets, a Ministry of Commerce official ...

The Japanese ambassador is set to sign a new aid package today pledging about $140 million worth of support for various projects, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ...

Doctor Beat Richner, the prominent Swiss-born doctor credited with resurrecting the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospitals – which have treated millions of patients free of charge since 1992 – stepped down from his more than two-decade role of managing the hospitals, citing a serious illness. ...

Opposition lawmakers yesterday left a meeting at the Interior Ministry exasperated, as officials from the latter continued to deem the presidency of their leader, Kem Sokha, and the vice presidency of three senior lawmakers, illegitimate, but offered no clear path to a resolution. ...

Members of the prime minister’s anti-logging task force who had been looking into officials’alleged collusion with Vietnamese timber smugglers in Mondulkiri has ended its 10-day investigation. ...

About $170,000 remains to be found for a coalition of watchdogs and civil society observers known as the “situation room” to successfully monitor all of Cambodia’s 2017 commune elections for irregularities. ...

Chinese and ASEAN representatives are meeting in Siem Reap to begin hammering out a code of conduct for the highly contested South China Sea. ...

Executives at Singapore-listed energy firm KrisEnergy Ltd say they have settled terms with the Cambodian government and are ready to sign a long-awaited production-sharing agreement that would pave the way for the first-ever extraction of petroleum from Cambodian territorial waters. ...

In its first two months of regular operation Cambodia’s first civil aviation training centre has provided certificates to dozens of aviation officials and airport staff, helping to raise the skill level of personnel in the Kingdom’s fast-expanding aviation sector. ...

Chroy Changvar peninsula land disputants yesterday delivered a petition to the Ministry of Land Management rejecting City Hall’s proposal to take away 90 percent of their land for the development of a satellite city. ...

A coalition of watchdogs and other civil society groups yesterday announced their intention to form a “situation room” for the 2017 commune elections in order to monitor the voting process for irregularities. ...

The growing number of foreign visitors arriving by sea represents a promising source of tourism revenue for Cambodia, though limited port and tourism infrastructure has hampered its realisation, tourism stakeholders said yesterday. ...

Phnom Penh deputy governor Ieng Aunny yesterday acknowledged that the capital continues to struggle with waste management despite recent decentralisation measures, laying the blame with districts’ and communes’ lack of awareness of their new responsibilities, as well as what he characterised as contractor CINTRI’s ongoing ...

Phnom Penh and Beijing are in talks to become “sister cities”, chief of the Chinese Embassy’s political section Wang De Xin confirmed yesterday. ...

Sweden’s development agency will provide $7 million to foster the development of small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in Cambodia, according to state-run news agency AKP. ...

The Cambodian government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with officials from China’s Shaanxi province aimed at bolstering trade and tourism, according to a release yesterday by the Ministry of Commerce. ...

Cambodian mobile operator Smart Axiata launched a $5 million venture capital fund yesterday that will seek to identify, fund and nurture local digital services companies and startups. ...

The Ministry of Agriculture is working to develop a procedural framework for the trade and use of biological control agents (BCAs) in agriculture in an effort to improve crop yields, protect consumer health and ensure continued access to key export markets. Regulation could also create ...

Preah Sihanouk province welcomed nearly 2.4 million tourists in 2016, generating $96 million in revenue, following a significant rise in domestic and international tourist arrivals, a tourism official said yesterday. . ...