News
Business boom depletes forests
During the past four years, Cambodia has seen drastic decreases in rare species of trees due to illegal logging, community research from the National Resource Protection Group indicates. If continued unabated, illegal logging threatens to wholly deplete Cambodia’s rare tree species, Chut Wutty said. Cambodia’s ...
Big brands talk labour rights
The biggest names in the apparel industry, including Nike, Puma and Gap, would meet today with officials from the Ministry of Labour to discuss issues plaguing the Cambodian garment manufacturing industry, such as mass fainting and contractual disputes, labour activists said yesterday. Dave Welsh, country ...
Rail project in ADB sights
The Asian Development Bank said yesterday problems with a railway rehabilitation project – funded by the bank and AusAID – identified by a local NGO that was suspended by the government last month “may require further investigation or analysis”. In July, STT released a report ...
Road Crash Report Shows Fatalities Up Year-to-Year
Road accidents claimed the lives of 1,816 people in 2010, a slight increase from the 1,717 killed in 2009, according to a report by the Cambodia Road Crash and Victim Information System. The total number of casualties from road accidents reached 18,287 in 2010, according ...
Activists, Journalist Summoned Over Incitement
Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has summoned for questioning two rights group activists and a journalist over charges that they incited ethnic minority villagers in Lumphat district to violence in 2009, a court official said yesterday. The case against the three men – Adhoc provincial coordinator Pen ...
Police Warn NGOs Over Workshops
Kompong Thom provincial authorities have threatened to shut down two NGOs who have been providing free legal education to poor villagers in the province, accusing the groups of fomenting rural unrest against private investors. The NGOs, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights and the Natural ...
China's investment in Cambodia reaches 8.8 bln USD
PHNOM PENH– Cambodia has received 8.8 billion U.S. dollars of investments from China from 1994 to July 2011, making China the leading country in the investments in the country, according to the reports from the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) on Tuesday. The ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-09/06/c_131104903.htm
Climate Change Affects on Livelihoods for Rural People
The Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) collaborated to launch the 2011 Cambodia Human Development Report (CHDR) on August 30th which identifies climate change as a threat to human development gains and a source of increasing ...
Time right for talks on sea boundary
In 2009, the Democrat-led government and the People’s Alliance for Democracy accused ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra of holding secret talks with Cambodia about exploiting oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Thailand. The government threatened to revoke a memorandum of understanding on overlapping ...
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/255142/time-right-for-talks-on-sea-boundary
US Fortune 500 Firms Wrap Up Cambodia Visit
A US-Asean Business Council delegation representing 11 fortune 500 companies concluded a two-day visit to Phnom Penh on Saturday, the council said in a statement. With Cambodia scheduled to take the chairmanship of Asean next year, members from US companies such as Chevron, GE, Abbot, ...
Vietnam top destination for Cambodians
Cambodian outbound tourist departures rose 29 per cent year-on-year through July, with the bulk of the travellers going to Vietnam and Thailand, according to Ministry of Tourism statistics. Nearly 358,000 Cambodian tourists left the Kingdom in the first seven months of 2011, up from about ...
Most U.S. Firms Plan to Expand Business in SE Asia: Amcham
Eighty-five percent of U.S. companies in Southeast Asia plan to expand their business as the region will become more important in the next two years, the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Singapore said on Monday. “ASEAN continues to grow in importance for businesses in the ...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/05/us-firms-asia-idUSTRE78411L20110905
Laos Urges Cambodian Businesspeople to Invest More
President of Laos National Assembly, Her Excellency Pany Yathotou, on September 1st arrived here for the four-day official visit in order to strengthen bilateral cooperation between the neighboring countries “Both sides will exchange visits of the officials and lawmakers of National Assemblies to strengthen bonds and ...
Cambodia's special economic zones waiting for foreign investments
PHNOM PENH — Eight out of Cambodia’s 19 special economic zones (SEZ) are being operational across the country, while the rest are still waiting for both local and foreign investors, the data from Council for Development of Cambodia (CDC) showed on Saturday. The statistics showed that ...
http://www.asean-china-center.org/english/2011-09/05/c_131100346.htm
Cambodia, South Korea Ties
Cambodia-Korea Alumni Association (CAMKAA) in cooperation with The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) Cambodia Office launched the 3rd Seminar on the “Exchange Experiences of the Cambodia Korea Alumni Association” on August 26th to observe the mutual cooperation between Cambodia-South Korea. Mr. Seng Setha, President of CAMKAA, ...
Cambodia, Thailand Will Likely Resume Talks on Offshore Oil and Gas
Cambodia’s and Thailand’s governments will likely resume negotiations on offshore drilling for oil and gas which will bring mutual benefits of the area of overlapping maritime claims after Cambodia gave the green light for issues before the visit of new Thai foreign minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul ...
Rice Scheme Will Hurt Thais and Help Vietnam
Thailand–Consumers face prospect of high prices, low quality rice from Burma, Cambodia: TDRI. While consumers and taxpayers will suffer from the government’s controversial rice policy, Vietnam will substantially gain, the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) has warned. Ammar Siamwalla, a prominent economist, yesterday asked the ...
Gov’t to Watch Shipments From Bird Flu-Hit Countries
Manila–Incoming bird and poultry shipments from countries affected by the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) will be seized and destroyed given concerns of a resurgence, the government said. The Agriculture department last Friday announce heightened surveillance at all ports of entry as well as the ...
24 More Faint at Dangkao District Garment Factory
Continuing the spate of mass fainting at Phnom Penh garment factories, 24 workers fainted at the Heart Enterprise factory on Friday, prompting the factory to shut down for the second time in a week, officials said. The Dangkao district garment factory had reopened on Friday ...
Nine Companies Barred From State Projects for Not Paying Tax
The Ministry of Finanace in August barred nine local companies from working on government infrastructure projects for allegedly failing to pay tax owed on several projects funded by foreign money, government and company officials said yesterday. The move by Finance Minister Keat Chhon to freeze ...
Report Says Reforms Were Hard to Drill Home at Petrol Authority
The Cambodian National Petroleum Authority restricted vital information and failed to cooperate with consultants working for the Asian Development Bank who were deployed to the authority between 2007 and 2010 as part of a $1 million project to strengthen governance at the body, a new ...
World Bank Influence Curbed by ‘New’ Donors
The World Bank is losing influence in Cambodia to “emerging donors” and making no major headway in stemming corruption, the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Groups said in a report released Wednesday. Specifically focused on the World Bank;s 2007 anti-corruption initiative through 2010, the report uses six ...
Digging deep outside the law
Weak enforcement of mining laws excludes local communities from the decision-making process and smudges the revenue transparency, said George Boden, a campaigner at watchdog group Global Witness. Weak enforcement of mining laws excludes local communities from the decision-making process and smudges the revenue transparency, said ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011090251412/Business/digging-deep-outside-the-law.html
Exports to be unaffected by debt crisis
As Cambodian exports continue to grow, commerce officials predict sovereign debt crises in the United States and Europe will not threaten the sector. Total exports surged by more than 46 per cent to US$2.677 billion in the first seven months of the year, compared to ...