News

Canadian firm Manulife Financial plans to set up one of Cambodia’s first life-insurance operations, the company said yesterday. The Ministry of Economy and Finance had approved “in principle” the investment, which a spokesperson from the company said would be at least US$7 million ...

Refresh Mobile yesterday announced the purchase of mobile banking outfit WING from Australia’s ANZ, although the amount of the deal was not released. WING will join Refresh’s stable of electronic payment and cell phone top-up services, in addition to soon offering overseas mobile remittance capabilities, Refresh ...

The Kampong Thom provincial governor issued a letter on Tuesday to villagers living in Santuk district, ordering them to provide documentation confirming their ownership of land they reportedly “purchased” from brokers after it had already been assigned to relocated families, officials said yesterday. Deputy district governor ...

Representatives of 503 former railway workers protested outside the Ministry of Transportation in Phnom Penh yesterday, demanding the government pay them outstanding salaries ranging from US$2,500 to $5,000 per person. Railway workers from Battambang, Kampot, Pursat and Takeo who were formerly employed by the government, but ...

An official with the Fisheries Administration predicted yesterday that the annual fish catch would increase this year by about 20 percent over last year, saying that recent efforts to reduce illegal fishing practices around the Tonle Sap lake had contributed to the jump ...

Just months before Sihanoukville Autonomous Port is supposed to list on the Cambodia Securities Exchange, officials said yesterday that the state-owned enterprise is still more expensive and slower at processing goods than other ports in the region. An investor said that the problems confronting the port ...

Bridges Across Borders Cambodia yesterday accused the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAid) of white-washing conditions at relocation sites for families being evicted by a $142 million railway rehabilitation project being funded largely with their money ...

About 150 former Boeng Kak lake residents staged a protest at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park yesterday, demanding more compensation than they initially received when they were evicted from their homes to make way for a real estate project owned by the firm of a CPP ...

Kompong Thom provincial officials denied a media report yesterday that authorities had filed a legal complaint against two villagers and two human rights workers who campaigned in the province last week to demand protection for Prey Long forest ...

Malaysia wants to reach bilateral agreements with Cambodia and other labor-sending countries that would allow foreign maids to keep their passports, limit their work-day to eight hours and give them one day off per week, Malaysian news media reported yesterday. Malaysian Human Resources Minister Datuk Subramaniam ...

Cambodia plans to spend nearly US$200 million to rebuild after the worst floods in a decade hit the country in September and October. The floods require an immediate response, Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon said yesterday at a meeting of the Council for the ...

A 10 per cent rise in the number of garment and footwear factories this year showed the government’s commitment to solving labour disputes, and that its mechanisms to do this were working, a senior official at the labour ministry said yesterday, while admitting that a ...

A pair of Sandan district villagers who participated in last week’s Prey Lang forest protest against illegal logging, and two of the NGO workers who monitored them, were facing accusations of incitement and destruction of property in complaints filed against them in the provincial court, ...

Due to a lack of available tax collectors, the Ministry of Economics and Finance once again delayed collections on the 0.1 percent property tax on all immovable property worth approximately $25,000 or more, according to a ministry notice issued yesterday ...

The drafting of a law on e-commerce that would regulate electronic transfers in Cambodia has been postponed because the World Bank has suspended funds over the government’s handling of land evictions in Phnom Penh. In September, Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh said that the government should aim ...

Two men were arrested Monday in Kompong Thom province for illegally transporting nearly half a cubic meter of valuable rosewood, said a forestry official ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) met yesterday with the representatives of families evicted or facing eviction to make way for an ADB-funded railway project, and defended itself against complaints that the project was pushing some of them deeper into poverty. The ADB has billed the $142 ...

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and South Korea jumped more than 40 per cent year-on-year through September, according to the Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency. Total trade between January and September reached $387 million, according to KOTRA, up 45 per cent from $267 million during the year-ago ...

The National Bank of Cambodia yesterday granted Industrial and Commercial Bank of China a financial business licence, according to a report on aastocks, a Chinese stocks news service ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment told a Japanese oil company yesterday to better define the location of its initial onshore operations given the potential impact on the local population and environment. The Ministry of Environment has required Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation to specify where ...

A Ratanakkiri Provincial Court prosecutor yesterday summoned an ethnic minority Jarai man in O’Yadav district to explain to the court his allegations that local authorities had threatened to kill him for exposing a land-sale corruption racket. Romas Chhvang, 45, filed a complaint to the court at ...

More than 45,000 hectares of land in Preah Vihear province were granted to five companies for rubber plantations on July 6 after the government reclassified the land from state public to state private land on the same day, according to the five sub-decrees signed by ...

Families evicted or still facing eviction to make way for an Asian Development Bank (ADB)-funded project to rehabilitate the country’s railway system plan to petition the ADB today for help securing better compensation from the government. The ADB is putting up more than half the money ...

A representative of environmental group International Rivers said yesterday that if the Laos government were to move forward with a controversial dam project, it would violate the 1995 Mekong Agreement. “Moving forward with the dam would be against international law,” said Ame Trandem, Sountheast Asia program ...