Economy and commerce

CONSTRUCTION is progressing on a $1.5 million baby-products factory that will be among the largest in the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone (PPSEZ). Combi (Cambodia), which owns the factory, announced the plans for its new facility in an online job listing yesterday. The five-hectare factory was scheduled ...

Residents of a village in the middle of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap “Great Lake” live surrounded by water, but don’t have enough access to clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing. The Tonle Sap, a combined lake and river system that swells in the rainy season to ...

CAMBODIA Post (CP), which plans to list on the local bourse, earned 8.1 per cent more revenue year-on-year in 2012, driven in part by its recent transformation from a wholly state-owned delivery company into a semi-autonomous entity. Revenues last year hit more than $4 million, compared ...

CAMBODIA needs greater diversification of its exports – especially in the agricultural sector – in order to achieve sustainable economic growth, a senior official said yesterday. Economy and Finance Minister Keat Chhon raised the issue during the annual meeting of the Ministry of Commerce. Commerce Minister ...

Former employees of the failed telecommunications company MFone have been told they can expect a decision next month on their claims for more than $4 million in compensation. Former Mfone section manager Bou Kunthea said after a meeting yesterday with offic-ials from the Ministry of Social ...

Six of the 10 labor unions negotiating with the country’s garment manufacturers over a new minimum wage for factory workers dropped their demands yesterday to $73 per month, breaking previous commitments by unions to stand at $91. Ken Loo, secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturers Association ...

Hun Sen asked authorities to maintain the pristine beaches along coastal provinces by not allowing any industrial factories to be constructed on or near them. The comment was aimed towards an agreement signed by Cambodian and Chinese companies late last month to build a $2.3 ...

Cambodia on Tuesday officially inaugurated the National Council on Green Growth, aiming at developing a sustainable economic society with natural resource and environment sustainability. Cambodia has adopted several legal instruments for the green growth implementation. Those included the roadmap for green growth, the memorandum of ...

The Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam Insurance Joint Stock Corporation (BIC) has announced it will pour nearly 5 million USD into its subsidiary companies in Laos and Cambodia. BIC will also buy back the 65 percent stake of the Cambodian Investment and Development ...

Union leaders asked garment workers to go on strike and demand the $100/month wage because the factory owners were not budging from their $75 stance. Rong Chhun, President of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, said “This was the last meeting and we couldn’t ...

Hun Sen announced that 1.5 mln hectares of Economic Land Concessions were granted to private companies. 1.2 mln hectares, 80 percent, of the concessions are used for rubber plantation sector. He said, that Cambodia still maintain[s] 9.2 mln hectares of forest land even though 1.5 mln ...

The Asian Development Bank has refused to release a critical study on the impacts its $141.6 million railway project is having on thousands of Cambodian families because disclosure of the report could hurt its relationship with the government, an ADB spokeswoman said. Raising concerns about the ...

CAMBODIA’S first financial leasing company plans to rev up its market share for motorcycle financing from 15 to 45 percent starting this year. GL Finance plans to do so by increasing its number of branches here from 11 to 36, said Mitsuji Konoshita, chairman of Group ...

About 300 former employees of bankrupt mobile phone operator Mfone continued to protest yesterday outside the company’s closed Phnom Penh offices, demanding severance payments totaling $4.4 million for 1,092 workers. But Vong Savan, deputy secretary-general of the Labor Dissolution Commission at the Ministry of Social ...

Newly-Appointed Director General of the state-owned Telecom Cambodia (TC) Kim Vikra vowed Monday to enhance the enterprise’s governance in order to improve business operations and revenues. “I am committed to working with all colleagues in order to lead the enterprise to progress,”he said at his official ...

The Prime Minister ordered 49 family’s houses to be rebuild [sic] at Keo Pus Village, in the Steung Hav District of Sihanoukville, after they had been demolished by authorities earlier this month. He also ordered Bin Chhin, Chairman of the National Authority for Land Dispute ...

Unions and labour rights groups have spent recent months unashamedly drilling home a stark reminder: Cambodia’s minimum garment wage, at $61 per month, compares poorly with those in Thailand – where workers earn more than $200 a month – and Vietnam, which has a base ...

At Cambodia’s first ever international motor show over the weekend, top-end car manufactures including Mercedez-Benz, BMW and Ford presented their luxury range of SUV’s, sedans pickup trucks and motorbikes. Vehicle imports to Cambodia, which include cars, trucks and motorcycles, more than doubled to 1.9 million ...

About 200 former employees of bankrupt mobile phone operator Mfone yesterday protested outside the company’s shuttered offices, asking for the help of Prime Minister Hun Sen in the fight to get more than $4 million in compensation from the company. Mfone declared itself insolvent in ...

Sales of SIM cards reached 19.7 million last year, a 21 per cent rise from the 16.2 million sold in 2011, data from the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication (MPTC) shows. In contrast to the use of SIM cards, the number of telco operators decreased. In ...

Stevia Nutra Corporation, a Canadian agro-company, said in a press release on Friday that the initial growing season of stevia, commonly known as sweetleaf, in Cambodia was successfully completed. The first harvest of high-quality stevia leaves has now commenced and samples have been prepared for testing ...

The Cambodian automotive industry will expand after the Kingdom’s integration into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, thanks to the free flow of goods within the bloc and Cambodia’s competitive advantage as a low-cost manufacturer, according to Cambodian Commerce ...

Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a ...

As night falls in Phonm Penh, thousands of weary workers stream from textile factories, reflecting the abundance of jobs created by the clothing industry’s desire for cheap labor. However, as the number of international clothes companies tapping into Cambodia’s workforce grows, so does anger at the ...