News

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 ...

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 ...

A Malaysian company has been granted three tracts of land totaling more than 23,000 hectares for oil palm and rubber plantations in Preah Vihear province, according to documents submitted to the Malaysian stock exchange. The acquisition flout the legal maximum of concession land that a single ...

Sri Lanka’s Touchwood Investments PLC has acquired 11,138 hectares of land in Cambodia to set up an agricultural project to plant rubber and other crops. Chairman of the firm, Roscoe A. Maloney, says the acquisition done in the previous financial year is aimed at exploring the ...

Natural rubber (NR) production in Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) this year is set to rise by 4.9% to 10.83 million tonnes from 10.33 million tonnes in 2011 The members of ANRPC are Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, China, Papua New Guinea, the ...

Members of Bunong ethnic minority forest group in Kratie province who accused local police of barring their community patrols in search of illegal logging were told by a Forestry Administration official yesterday that they had no authority to operate. Mr. [Peit] Kun Pedor [head of ...

Tyre manufacturer MRF Ltd was looking at acquiring rubber estates to meet the company’s long-term raw material requirements and to bring down costs, a top official said. “We are scouting for acquisitions of estates abroad to meet long-term rubber needs,” said Koshy Varghese, executive vice-president, marketing, ...

Domestic rubber prices are likely to stay below 120 baht a kilogramme over the next five years due to the sluggish world economic outlook that has sapped demand. The lingering euro-zone debt crisis, weak growth in rubber-using countries and rising production in Asean will continue to ...

Two land dispute protesters disappeared yesterday after being stopped by the police and detained while driving from Kratie province to Phnom Penh with a large group who intended to stage a protest in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s house. About 200 villagers from Snuol district ...

Sarorn Phi, 39, cautiously stops his moto 20 metres away from the large, signless boom gate blocking his path in Sesan district. He shuffles toward the security guard’s hut at the entrance to a sprawling Chinese rubber plantation and negotiates with the guard to enter ...

Sugar factories from Tay Ninh Province have spent over VND110 billion (US$5 million) to plant sugar cane in Cambodia’s Svay Rieng Province for the 2012-2013 crop, said the Tay Ninh People’s Committee. Vietnamese sugar producers have planted the crops in Cambodia as sugar cane in ...

Cambodia’s largest Sihanoukville Autonomous Port (SAP) Saturday reported that it earned the total revenues of about US$14-M in the 1st 5 months of this year, + 14 rise from US$12.3-M at the same period last year. Goods exported through the port are mostly garment products and ...

Hundreds of people from 10 villages in Svay Rieng province’s Krasaing commune claim that Mittapheap Rubber Tree Company has been clearing parts of their community-owned forest illegally for more than a year. On Tuesday, residents involved in the land dispute took matters into their own hands. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday implicated Mam Sonando, owner of the independent Beehive Radio station, in an alleged secessionist movement in Kratie province and announced the government’s intentions to arrest him. “Now, we compete with the ringleader of the Democrats Association, which created the state ...

More than 100 villagers from Svay Rieng province’s Romeas Hek district protested yesterday on land they say was stolen from them in 2007 and recently cleared by a former community representative, whose uncle is a local commune chief Villagers said lang Hai, who acted as ...

The government on Friday denied it had violated a moratorium on granting new land concessions when Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on more than 20,000 hectares of land to three rubber companies 11 days after the ban was announced on May 7. According to documents ...

When it became the first—and still the only—company to list on Cambodia’s stock market on April 18, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority saw its share price shoot up some 50 percent on its first day of trading before beginning two weeks of steady decline. Since ...

Cambodia’s rubber prices declined almost six per cent in the past two weeks, caused by concern over the European crisis with Greece, industry players and Cambodian officials said yesterday. Men Sopheak, deputy director general of Chop Rubber Plantation, a big rubber exporter in Cambodia, said the ...

Authorities in Kratie province have denied entry to journalists and rights workers to the site of violent land clashes that led to the death of a teenage girl on Wednesday. Rights workers say they fear for the safety of villagers in Broma village, but police say ...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced plans Thursday to encourage rubber smallholdings in a bid to expand production as the country promotes the cash crop as the number two commodity after rice. Hun Sen said the government will support not only large-scale rubber plantations but also ...

Cambodian rubber exports declined 3 per cent year-on-year during the first two months of 2012, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. The value of the exports fell by nearly a third. ...