News
Footwear Sector To Have ‘Running Room’
Cambodia’s footwear industry has experienced significant growth over the past five years, with the number of factories doubling, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce. Meanwhile, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has announced it will monitor and report on footwear factories. As of November, 45 ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031361901/Business/footwear-sector-to-have-running-room.html
More trade finance needed
A lack of trade financing – the loans and guarantees needed to support import and export transactions – for international deals within developing Asian countries such as Cambodia is restricting opportunities for growth, a survey by the Asia Development Bank (ADB) has found. Of 106 banks ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031361906/Business/more-trade-finance-needed.html
Rubber price falls from 2012
Thanks to seasonal demand, the price of rubber has increased from 2012’s year-end prices. But it was still slightly lower than at this time last year, a rubber-plantation owner said yesterday. Mak Kimhong, president of the Cambodia Rubber Association and owner of the Chhop Rubber Plantation ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031361907/Business/rubber-price-falls-from-2012.html
Villagers pin big hopes on little dam
In the past four years, families in Anlong Chrey village, in Kampong Speu provinces’s Thpong district, have watched a small multipurpose dam being built at their back doors. For village chief Soung Pao, 59, who gave up two hectares for the dam – one of ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031361911/National/villagers-pin-big-hopes-on-little-dam.html
Round 2 at Phnom Penh's Borei Keila district
Four families who were violently evicted from Borei Keila in January last year built shelters yesterday in the rubbish where their houses once stood, claiming the land still belonged to them. The evictees erected small frames on the land, in the capital’s Prampi Makara district, irritating ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031361918/National/round-2-at-borei-keila.html
Siamese Rosewood Elevated to Protected Status
Siamese Rosewood, which is illegally logged and exported from Cambodia in large quantities, will be protected internally as a threatened species following a decision taken in Bangkok yesterday. A meeting of the 177 countries party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild ...
Still No Donor to Take Over Communal Land Titling From Canada
The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said yesterday that it had still found no replacement donor to commit long-term to carrying on its work helping indigenous ethnic minority groups secure communal land titles once it pulls out in May. Kan Vibol, project field manager for CIDA’s ...
Government targets unsafe trucks on national roads
Just 6 percent of 12,006 commercial freight vehicles passed recent road safety inspections, while an estimated 70 percent of car drivers bought their driving licenses illegally from private driving schools, a meeting at the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation was told yesterday. Many of the ...
Wage demands: Workers hit streets in bid for pay rise
More than a thousand garment workers went on strike yesterday morning to demand a minimum wage increase and better working conditions, following the failure of minimum wage negotiations between unions and employers on Monday. Some 600 workers in Kandal province yesterday protested in front of ...
ASEAN countries agree to greater economic cooperation
Senior representatives for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and ASEAN met here Tuesday and issued a joint statement highlighting their agreement to forge stronger mutual investment, trade, transport and scientific cooperation links. The joint statement was released at the conclusion of the 6th annual Cambodia-Laos-Myanmar-Vietnam (CLMV) Summit, ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2013-03/12/c_132228469.htm
Turkey to enhance diplomatic ties with Cambodia
Turkey is willing to establish an embassy residence in Cambodia in order to promote bilateral relations and cooperation between the two countries, the newly- designated ambassador of Turkey to Cambodia, Osman Bulent Tulun said Tuesday. The two countries’ bilateral trade is relatively small. According to ...
Upstream Dams, Downstream Trouble
As examples, Laos broke ground on a new Mekong River dam that’s causing concern bordering on fury in Cambodia and Vietnam. India is enraged about a new Chinese dam going up on the Brahmaputra River. And Ethiopia’s new dam on the Nile is angering Sudan, ...
http://www.hydroworld.com/news/2013/03/12/upstream-dams-downstream-trouble.html
USDA Hikes 2013 Export Projections for Cambodia, India, U.S.
The USDA increased its rice export forecasts for India, Cambodia and the U.S. mainly due to higher production estimates in these countries. Cambodia’s 2013 rice export estimates was increased 150,000 tons to a record 975,000 tons, up about 21% from last year, said the USDA in ...
http://oryza.com/content/usda-hikes-2013-export-projections-cambodia-india-us
Cambodia's employers, trade unions fail to reach agreement on pay rise
The third round of negotiation between Cambodia’s garment and footwear manufacturers and representatives of trade unions on minimum wage increase ended without result on Monday. The talk between the employers represented by Nang Sothy, co- chair of the Government-Private Working Group on Industrial Relations, and Ken ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2013-03/11/c_132225825.htm
Waterways may reduce export costs
Cambodia’s waterways are significantly under-used for the transport of commodities such as rice, and enhanced infrastructure and a review of government fees is needed at the Kingdom’s ports to make exports more competitive, industry experts say. According to figures from the Alliance of Rice Producers and ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031261877/Business/waterways-may-reduce-export-costs.html
France set to grant Kingdom $47.7m for infrastructure
The French Development Agency yesterday agreed to grant Cambodia a total of $47.7 million, $8.7 million of which is a loan. The sum is to support the Kingdom’s irrigation infrastructure investment, to improve the country’s access to drinkable water and to fund the fight against emerging ...
Risk Of Money Laundering Grows With Economy
With Cambodia currently seen as a country where the laundering of illicit cash may be going undetected, an international expert yesterday warned that economic growth and more international trade could leave the country open to financial crime. Gert Demmink, a former head of supervision at ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/risk-of-money-laundering-grows-with-economy-14444/
Animal feed lucrative but demand not being met
The production of animal feed may be lucrative for family-run businesses, but production is failing to meet the local market’s demand, said industry experts. Ros Limhy, National Agriculture adviser for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ Tonle Sap Poverty Reduction and Smallholder Development project, and ...
Hun Sen says Wage Changes Are Not Up To The Government
Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that the government has no role in setting the minimum wage, as Cambodia is a market driven economy, and shot down unnamed people who have been calling for the government to significantly raise the country’s floor wage of $61. “For ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/hun-sen-says-wage-changes-are-not-up-to-government-14455/
Vehicle registration grows despite flaws in the system
An absence of public transport, improved roads and the economic development of Cambodia’s rural areas was reflected in an increase in vehicle registrations by 7.7 per cent from 2011 to 2012, official data shows. However, as an insider said yesterday, many cars and motorcycles will ...
Banong Families Receive Communal Land Tiles
Seventy-two ethnic minorities Banong families received communal titles to a combined 1,008 hectares of ancestral land in Mondolkiri province yesterday morning in a ceremony attended by Land Management Minister Chhun Lim. Communal titles were designed to protect the ancestral lands of the country’s minorities from outside ...
At Fuel Pumps, Price and Quality Are Anybody’s Guess
PHNOM PENH – Cambodia imports all of its fuel from abroad, but little regulation in the sector means everyday Cambodians see all kinds of prices at the pumps. Prices are high in Phnom Penh, while sometimes cheaper on the outskirts of the capital and even ...
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/at-fuel-pumps-price-and-quality-are-anybody-guess/1619374.html
Farmers of cassava afraid of losing out to a lack of rainfall
The price for cassava plants is increasing in the Kingdom’s north-western provinces, where the new season started. Due to the lack of rain many were damaged, according to farmers and officials. Sreng Sreang, deputy director of the Pailin longan collective, which planted about five hectares of ...
Phnom Penh Gains Partnership With Tennessee City
The Phnom Penh Municipality and delegates from Cleveland, Tennessee, yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding to establish sister-city status, officials said. “While we are welcoming [the delegates], there are people outside who are demanding that we solve their housing problems,” said Phnom Penh Governor Kep ...