News

Hundreds of indigenous minorities in Ratanakkiri province are being made worse off by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme which, rather than securing their property rights, is contributing to the loss of their ancestral lands, according to a new report. The report supports complaints aired since ...

Ratanakkirri province’s first privately owned water treatment facility will begin to supply clean drinking water to thousands of households in Banlung City on May 1, but residents will have to pay a premium for its use, officials said yesterday. The $1.7 million facility being built ...

‘I heard a f—ing crazy dog say that we can’t dock in Kampong Saom, but we definitely can do that,” a crackling voice declares boisterously. The speaker, captured in video obtained by the Post, is part of an illegal timber syndicate. The identity of the speaker ...

Cambodian officials say they will focus on nine different sectors in a bid to diversify and ensure continued national economic growth. Among the nine priorities, rubber will play a crucial role in Cambodia’s trade integration strategy. After opening a workshop on Cambodia’s trade strategy for the coming ...

Vietnamese enterprises are increasingly investing overseas, especially in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, it has been announced. Elsewhere in the region, the Viet Nam Rubber Group has invested in growing rubber plantations in Laos and Cambodia since 2007 and aims to own 100,000 hectares by ...

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 Cambodian Government has agreed in principle with Rubber Industry Smallholders’ Development Authority (RISDA) to open 20,000 hectares of rubber estates in that country on a joint venture basis, its Chairman Tan Abdul Tamby said. The former Melka chief minister said the Federal Government through the ...

Reporting that the country had achieved better than expected economic growth last year, Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday targeted a rapid expansion of the country’s rubber industry and predicted that almost 1 in 10 Cambodians would soon be working in rubber. “Agriculture continues to play ...

In what’s believed to be an unprecedented move, the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has ordered two companies holding economic land concessions to face court questioning on accusations of illegal logging and land clearing. Deputy prosecutor Ros Saram said he summonsed Vietnamese-owned Company 72 last week and will ...

Cambodia recorded a 17 percent rise in rubber latex exports in 2012; however, the revenues from the exports went down by 21 percent due to declining rubber prices in the international market, the government’s statistics showed Friday. The country had exported 54,530 tons of rubber latex ...

Bilateral trade volume between Cambodia and Vietnam jumped to 3.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2012, a 18 percent rise from 2.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2011, according to a report provided by the Association of Vietnam Investment in Cambodia on Saturday. The report also said ...

Economic land concessions granted to a pair of Vietnamese companies in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district were endangering the traditional lifestyles of as many as 200 ethnic-minority families, villagerstold the Post yesterday. As the companies actively cleared forest to make room for the eventual rubber plantations, the government ...

On the second day of his two-day visit to Ratanakkiri, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday cajoled indigenous minority members about their ready adoption of new technology amid the shift away from traditional ways of life, and extolled the benefits of rubber plantations over their ...

Cambodia’s rubber price is expected to fall further in coming years while government projects aimed at doubling rubber resin production will take effect by 2015, according to the latest figures from the Rubber General Department. Mak Kimhong, president of the Cambodia Rubber Association and owner of ...

Despite a moratorium on the granting of new economic land concessions (ELCs), the government has approved at least 32 ELCs since Prime Minister Hun Sen announced their suspension in May. According to sub-decrees dated from May onward and provided by local human rights group Adhoc, Mr. ...

Kratie province – Cambodia’s transformation from war-torn basket-case to one of Asia’s most promising emerging economies is being overshadowed by a backwards lurch in human rights and land policies that critics say are entrenching poverty. Next week’s visit by Barack Obama, the fist by a U.S. ...

Villagers in Ratanakirri province filed complaints to the provincial court and rights group Adhoc yesterday, claiming three security guards patrolling former state forest in O’Chum district threatened them and fired an AK-47 to scare them away. Kreung ethnic villager Travh Khambon, 37 of La’ak commune Kam ...

Cambodia’s transformation from war-torn basket-case to one of Asia’s most promising emerging economies is being overshadowed by a backwards lurch in human rights and land policies that critics say are entrenching poverty. ...

About 80 ethnic Bunong villagers living in Mondolkiri’s Pech Chreada district staged a protest against the Socfin-KCD rubber company Monday, demanding that the firm honor its long-standing pledge to return 1,000 hectares of farmland located inside its concession. Socfin-KCD, a join venture between Socfin, a ...

About 200 families in Koh Kong province’s Botum Sakor district were threatened with legal action yesterday by the district governor, who told them their 100-hectare plantation had been earmarked for development by a Chinese firm, a village representative alleged. Two days later, Botum Sakor district ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court questioned two well-known human rights workers yesterday in an incitement lawsuit brought against them by a CPP commune chief, one of those questioned said. About 200 ethnic minority Tumpuon villagers, embroiled in a land dispute with the DM Group rubber company, protested ...

Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted. While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court will appoint a new judge to process complaints filed by ethnic Jarai minority villagers against a firm owned by Keat Kolney, the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon, regarding a land dispute that has now dragged on for more than five ...

The price of rubber jumped to $2,500 per tonne last week after months of the commodity steadily dropping, industry analysts reported. The jump of $100 a tonne, or 4.2 per cent, comes after the price for rubber dropped in June from above $3,000 per tonne, according ...