News

Roughly 4,000 garment workers at a factory supplying clothes for U.S. brands Gap, Levi Strauss and Old Navy went on strike yesterday and threatened to march in Phnom Penh on Thursday to demonstrate against poor pay. The demonstration took place at Tai Yang Enterprises in Kandal ...

Thailand and Cambodia are making moves to repair trade relations as 30 of Thailand’s provincial commerce departments hold a three-day trade fair in Phnom Penh’s Diamond Island Convention Center this week, according to Jiranan Wongmongkol, director of the Foreign Trade Promotion Office (FTPO) at the ...

Revenues from the tourism sector increased 7 percent to $1.91 billion in 2011, though more could be made if hotels sourced more goods from local producers instead of importing from abroad, Tourism Minister Thong Khon said yesterday. Speaking at a conference in Phnom Penh, Mr. Khon ...

Cambodian Confederation of Unions president Rong Chhun threatened yesterday to lead a march of more than 3,000 striking garment workers from Kandal province to the capital on Thursday if their employer refuses to meet their demands. “[Workers] have already made commitments with me to march to ...

A dispute over territory in the South China Sea is once again set to hang over talks when China and the U.S. join in on a week of high-level Asean meetings that start in Phnom Penh on Friday. So far, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has ...

Prudential Corporation Asia yesterday received “in-principle” approval from the Ministry of Economy and Finance to establish a foreign-owned life insurance operation in the country, an official statement from the company said. The announcement comes after Canadian life insurance giant Manulife on Thursday made public plans for ...

Property development firm Hongkong Land (HKL) will not break ground on a 10,700-square-meter mixed-use office and retail project in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district until at least 2013, officials at the firm said Thursday. HKL acquired the property behind the U.S. Embassy in April 2011 as ...

A new system of regional appeal courts is moving closer to reality as the Ministry of Justice attempts to resolve the bottleneck of appeals in the justice system, officials said yesterday. Currently, appellants can wait up to five years or more to have their cases heard ...

An increasing number of boutique hotels are appearing in Cambodia and attracting foreign investment, insiders say, including a US$2 million investment in the Governor’s House, a newly opened, 10-room boutique hotel in Phnom Penh. The number of boutique hotels in Cambodia has increased rapidly, particularly in ...

Manulife, one of the world’s leading life insurance companies, now opened its office in Cambodia after seeing that growth of midlle class of total population. Manulife financial corporation was based in Canada. Manulife Financial on June 28 announced the official opening of its head office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and its ceremony was presided over by H.E. ...

Manulife Financial Corp. (MFC), Canada’s largest insurer, has opened an office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, its first in the Southeast Asian nation. Manulife has about 40 people in its Cambodian unit, the Toronto-based insurer said today in a statement. ...

Property prices in both in Phnom Penh and the surrounding suburbs have increased around 10 percent in the first half of 2012 as more foreign investors buy up new condominiums and banks provide more housing loans, say real estate experts. After years of flat prices due to weak demand in the wake of ...

A Cambodian maid who recently returned home from work in Malaysia fell ill and died over the weekend, highlighting ongoing concerns over the treatment of impoverished Southeast Asian women who seek work abroad but are often abused by their employers. Kuy Lyda, 17, died at a ...

The World Bank has denied a report that it is preparing to fund a new education project in Cambodia, 10 months after the bank froze all new lending to Cambodia to protest evictions and Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake. In The, an undersecretary of state ...

Increasing discrimination by factories against unions and continued poor wages in Cambodia’s garment sector have resulted in a rise in the number of worker protests, according to a report released yesterday by the International Labor Organization (ILO). According to its periodic synthesis report on working ...

The owner of a site in Phnom Penh where a 19th century French colonial building was demolished last week said yesterday she does not have enough money to follow through on plans to build a replica in its place. Kang Gheck Nai said it had always ...

“Vespa was in Cambodia before the war [and] Piaggio wanted to come back to the market in Cambodia, because the market is growing,” explained Frederic Bachelet, head of business development at Narita Vespa Co. Ltd. The company plans to break ground next week on ...

Cambodia and China, on June 13th, inked an agreement to strengthen their ties and showed they have become comprehensive strategic partners as ties between the two countries boosts bilateral trade to reach a level of 5 billion US dollars by 2017. Eang Sophallet, an assistant to Samdech Prime Minister Hun Sen, told media that ...

Stevia Nutra Corporation, a Canadian agro-business company, has announced its decision to grow stevia in Cambodia’s Kampong Speu province. The company will grow the plant, whose leaves are used as a sweetener or sugar substitute, on just over 20 hectares of land close to Phnom Penh. Stevia Nutra has incorporated Mighty MekongAgro Industries Co. Ltd, ...

Near the river in Phnom Penh and next to Diamond Island, there’s a huge, bunker-like building that is almost always a beehive of activity. Inside, there are people enjoying an evening concert or strolling around studying the decor, including large stone faces of the Buddha. Others, however, are occupied with more mundane matters-placing ...

While the Kingdom’s biggest industrial pig farming company is seeing steady growth as the nation’s population and hunger for pork grows, small pig farmers are having a hard time of it in the face of fluctuating prices and lower cost imports from Thailand, according to experts and insiders who came to a recent ...

Poipet – Thailand and Cambodia on Thursday launched direct bus services linking Bangkok and Phnom Penh via the Aranyaprathet-Poipet border crossing, aiming to cut transportation costs, MOCT reported on June 15. Transport Minister Jarupong Ruangsuwan and Cambodian Public Works and Transport Minister Tram Iv Tek and representatives of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) co-presided at the ...

Rights group Adhoc yesterday said it had seen a spike in complaints from families of migrant workers since last year’s government-ordered freeze on recruitment agencies sending maids to Malaysia. At a press conference in Phnom Penh, Adhoc said it had received 141 complaints from the relatives ...

Passenger traffic at Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanouk international airports saw a combined 18.9% growth in May 2012, with passenger numbers totaling 283,000, the report from SCA, society concession airport said on June 7. It adds: ‘This brings the year-to-date passenger arrivals and departures to 1.89 million, a sterling 21.8% jump.’ ...