The Phnom Penh Post
Number of Japanese firms to surge this year
If industry-watchers were roused last year by the influx of Japanese investment to Cambodia – including bellwether parts manufacturer Minebea – 2012 should not disappoint. Up to 60 new Japanese companies are expected to apply for business licences this year after the number tripled to about ...
Criticism for Cambodia’s tax revenue
Cambodia’s tax revenue increased 16 per cent in the first half of this year compared to the corresponding period last year – a rise economists have attributed to improvements in the Kingdom’s economy. Critics, however, say it amounts to little compared to the national gross domestic ...
Ministry, factories strike deal
About 600,000 workers in the lucrative garment and footwear industries, roughly 95 per cent of the sector’s work force, will soon take home an extra US$10 a month, the Ministry of Labour said yesterday. Barely an hour after a protest involving garment workers at the capital’s ...
Mobile phones could replace credit cards
Mobile money transfer service WING is preparing to launch a mobile wallet service later this year, and ACLEDA Unity is preparing to expand its own mobile services, enabling people to quickly pay for things just by touching their phone to a point-of-sale terminal. Near-field communications (NFC) ...
Confiscated bulldozer rejected
Hundreds of people from 10 villages in Svay Rieng province’s Krasaing commune claim that Mittapheap Rubber Tree Company has been clearing parts of their community-owned forest illegally for more than a year. On Tuesday, residents involved in the land dispute took matters into their own hands. ...
Farmland included in border exchange
Cambodia and Vietnam’s border shuffle in Kampong Cham won’t involve ceding the two previously discussed villages to Vietnam, a government official said yesterday, but it will include farmland meant to compensate Vietnam for the ethnic Khmer villages on what is believed to be the Vietnamese ...
Bloody crackdown on garment strike in Phnom Penh
A union employee representing striking workers from a factory that supplies Levi’s and Gap was left a bloodied mess near Wat Botum yesterday after police allegedly attacked him. According to rights groups, police set upon Long Panha, of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions (CATU), who ...
Interfering officials arrested
Military police in Stung Treng province arrested five government officials yesterday after they forcibly stopped student volunteers from measuring property lines as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s national initiative to help settle land disputes. ...
Brewery answers PM’s call for product exports
Khmer Brewery (KB), a locally owned company that produces Cambodia Beer, has made its first export to Japan, partly in response to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s call in mid-May for local food and beverage producers to push their products abroad. KB public-relations manager Sok Chantha said ...
Rocket Internet launches e-commerce site in Cambodia
A local representative of controversial online start-up incubator Rocket Internet said the company would invest “millions” in Cambodia as it launched a new online retail store yesterday, in what market insiders call a trend toward increasing e-commerce in the Kingdom. The site, shop.com.kh is offered in ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012071157333/Business/rocket-launches-e-commerce-site.html
Clinton visit sparks hope
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Phnom Penh today for diplomatic and business talks with China and ASEAN’s 10 member states, but rights groups and opposition parties are counting on the state of human rights in Cambodia to be a top priority as ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012071157348/National-news/clinton-visit-sparks-hope.html
Newlyweds targeted with ‘wedding loans’
Phnom Penh Commercial Bank will offer “wedding loans” to newlyweds, a product based on a similar borrowing practice is South Korea. The majority-owned South Korean bank will set aside more than US$1 million for start-up families that don’t want their parents shelling out savings for new ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012071157335/Business/newlyweds-wedding-loans.html
Forte Insurance predictions positive
Charles Cheo, managing director of Forte Insurance, is sanguine on the growth prospects of Cambodia’s US$30 million general insurance market, even though there are five other general insurers competing against Forte, and three new life insurers entering the market. Forte established a presence in Cambodia in ...
Cambodian rice to be DNA tested
Thailand may not export certain varieties of Cambodian-grown, but Thai-milled, rice internationally due to fears of intellectual property violations. Cambodian Malis rice is very similar to jasmine rice, and Thailand has expressed concerns that it may infringe on the Thai-owned jasmine rice variety. The Ministry of Agriculture has been ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012071157331/Business/rice-dna-tested.html
High court appeal for Boeung Kak 13
Thirteen Boeung Kak lake women imprisoned after a three-hour trial in May and released last month had appealed their guilty convictions to the Supreme Court, their lawyer said yesterday. “They told us they are completely dissatisfied with the verdict of the Appeal Court, which maintained the ...
Union boss accused of strike incitement
The president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions has been summonsed to Kandal Provincial Court to answer incitement and defamation allegations levied against her by the owner of the strike-plagued Tai Yang Enterprise factories. The court complaint comes ahead of major negotiations today in the ...
China to lend hand in battle with killer virus
China yesterday pledged to provide medical experts and funding to assist the investigation and clinical management of a virus that has killed more than 60 Cambodian children. Eang Sophalleth, personal spokesman for Prime Minister Hun Sen, told reporters the pledge had been made during a meeting ...
Tourism not hurt by outbreak
Cambodia’s tourism sector has emerged from a “mystery disease” scare unscathed, industry insiders said yesterday, although some regional health authorities noted what the World Health Organisation called an outbreak of Enterovirus-71 (EV-71), which has killed at least 52 children in the Kingdom. “The disease has only ...
ASEAN Infrastructure Fund could be within Cambodia's reach
Access to the region’s largest collective financial resource, the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund, could be easier than expected for Cambodia, according to an Asian Development Bank economist. Initiated in May, the fund is expected to lend up to US$4 billion and leverage up to $13 billion for ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012071057314/Business/regional-fund-cambodia-adb.html
Prasac moves towards becoming a bank
Prasac, a leading micro-finance institution in Cambodia, had increased its registered capital from US$3.8 million to $20 million in preparation for its transformation into a commercial bank by 2014, the institution said yesterday. “The registration requirement of $37.5 million is a very small amount to ...
China to join ASEAN sea talks
China may not be in ASEAN, but it’s looking more and more like an honorary member – at least where the South China Sea is concerned. ASEAN foreign ministers yesterday took a significant step towards involving the burgeoning superpower in South China Sea discussions, adopting key ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012071057326/National-news/china-joins-sea-talks.html
PM insists worries about dam overblown
In February, Son Chhay wrote to the premier urging him to investigate illegal logging outside the legal clearing area slated for the Stung Tatai dam reservoir in Koh Kong province and the environmental destruction that would be wrought by the Stung Cheay Areng dam. In a ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012071057322/National-news/worries-about-dam-overblown.html
Migrants to Korea jump
More Cambodian migrant workers headed to South Korea in the first half of this year than in all of 2011, data from the Ministry of Labour shows. A suspension on Vietnamese migration, coupled with an improving Korean economy, primarily accounted for the jump, officials say. Working ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012071057315/Business/migrants-to-korea-jump.html
Borei Keila evictees turn to Clinton
As the ASEAN summit turns Phnom Penh into a buzz of diplomatic activity, the chance to send a well-timed message has not been lost on the local community. Fifteen representatives of the evicted families of Borei Keila yesterday filed a petition asking US Secretary of State ...