Trading on the Cambodia Securities Exchange will be delayed once again until the beginning of 2012, Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon said yesterday.
He blamed an incomplete regulatory regime and the public’s lack of confidence in the stock market as reasons for the delay, saying trading would most likely start early next year.
“It’s probably a little bit later than [the original] schedule. It will probably start trading from January,” Keat Chhon said, speaking to reporters after his speech at an International Business Chamber of Cambodia conference in Phnom Penh…
We are scanning this massive volume from 2001 to add to Open Development Cambodia’s Village listings.
In the future, site visitors will be able to see commune maps linked to their associated villages.
UNION officials fired another volley in their battle against a hotel yesterday by announcing that they would file a complaint today with a Siem Reap court, as their protests continued to draw unwanted attention to the tourist town.
The Cambodian Tourism and Service Workers Federation complaint will demand that luxury Angkor Village Hotel and Resort respect an Arbitration Council ruling and reinstate 67 workers who were sacked early this year after some began unionising. ..
MORE than 4,000 workers at M&V Manufacturing International’s garment factory in Kampong Chhnang province continued to strike for a fourth day yesterday, as a union president urged Prime Minister Hun Sen to force the company to reinstate 20 fired workers.
Free Trade Union president Chea Mony wrote to Hun Sen to inform him that the employees had been “illegally dismissed” because they had joined the FTU to protest for better working conditions after two mass fainting incidents at the factory in August.
The faintings sparked investigations by the International Labour Organisation’s Better Factories program, which monitors the factory, and international brand H&M, which buys apparel from it…
PERSISTENT flooding in several areas of the Kingdom could result in more than US$100 million worth of damage, the National Committee for Disaster Management said yesterday.
Flood waters have killed 207 people since early September and forced more than 32,000 families from their homes, according to data from the NCDM. More than 445,530 hectares of the country’s most important agricultural product, rice paddy, have either been affected or destroyed. About 160 bridges are submerged, while 2,962 kilometres of roads have been impaired…
Environment Minister Mok Mareth yesterday asked China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to provide more details on the environmental impact of its project, though he said that exploration for oil and gas would likely begin later this month.
At a meeting at the Ministry of Environment, government officials voiced concerns that the government would be liable in the case of an oil spill from the drilling of an exploratory well 37km southwest off the coast of Sihanoukville. They also said that CNOOC must cooperate more closely with the Fisheries Administration, show proof of oil spill insurance and provide estimated statistics on emissions…
Also speaking at the meeting, Nam Linal, deputy secretary general of the Council for the Development of Cambodia, called on CNOOC to clarify who would be responsible for an oil spill in its Environmental Impact Assessment…
Officials said yesterday that the government had suspended a recruitment agency in Kompong Chhnang province suspected of forcibly confining 45 women and that plans were underway to shut it down permanently.
Police rescued the women, including 26 girls under the age of 18, who were training for domestic labor jobs in Malaysia, during a weekend raid on the provincial training center of the T&P Recruitment agency.
Chiv Pally, deputy director of the Interior Ministry’s anti-human trafficking department, said the Labor Ministry had suspended T&P yesterday and that he would ask both the ministry and the National Police to terminate the firm’s work license once he finishes his investigation…
Land evictions, poor prison conditions and the lack of an independent judiciary were among the concerns listed in the European Union’s 2010 review of human rights in Cambodia.
According to the EU Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World in 2010, which charts the EU’s human rights work in its relations with other countries, Cambodia needs to make better strides in following recommendations made by the EU in 2008…
A TelekomunikasiI Indonesia official said yesterday the company had cancelled plans to acquire a majority stake in Cambodian mobile operator CamGSM, just a month after officials at CamGSM parent Royal Group claimed a deal was imminent.
Telkom finance director Sudiro Asno made the statement in Jakarta, saying negotiations were off as a result of price differences…
Indonesian media last month reported a possible acquisition was still on the table, but was snagged in a government-approval process at Indonesia’s Ministry of State Owned Enterprises. Royal Group chairman Kith Meng said he was unaware of Telkom’s decision to drop the acquisition when reached by phone late yesterday…
SACOMBANK yesterday announced the launch of its new subsidiary, the 100 per cent foreign-owned Sacombank Cambodia Plc, which is set to target the Kingdom’s rural population.
The Vietnamese commercial bank plans to open branches throughout the country’s provinces to provide banking services to a larger cross-section of Cambodia, Sacombank Cambodia vice president Nguyen Minh Tam told the Post yesterday…
The dollar figure on government-approved investments in construction for the first eight months of the year increased by 92 per cent compared to the same period in 2010, according to official statistics.
The Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction approved 1,470 construction projects worth US$881.3 million between January and August, according to ministry statistics released yesterday. The ministry gave the green light to 1,580 projects worth $458.4 million during the same period in 2010…
The Angkor Village Hotel and Resort is breaking the law by refusing to reinstate 67 sacked workers that the Arbitration Council ruled were unlawfully dismissed, Siem Reap’s deputy governor claimed yesterday.
After attending a protest of hotel workers and supporters outside the hotel in Siem Reap town yesterday, Kim Chhay Heang said company owner Tep Vantho had simply ignored orders from his office to abide by an Arbitration Council decision and Cambodian law…
The workers were sacked between July and August after some of them began establishing a union, though Angkor Village Hotel and Resort’s owners have claimed their dismal was due to unrelated misconduct including, in some case, attempts to poison the management…
Government officials yesterday pointed to developing countries as the main culprits behind climate change and claimed such nations should provide the majority of finan-cing for protecting the Kingdom from the issue.
“We are a victim of the problems of the rich,” Environment Minister Mok Mareth said in his concluding remarks to the National Climate Change Forum in Phnom Penh. “Cambodia has not been the cause of climate change – the image of flooding is enough to show that we should all act now.”
The Kingdom is suffering from its worst floods in at least a decade. The death toll had climbed to 169 people, National Committee for Disaster Management cabinet chief Keo Vy said yesterday, with 68 of the victims aged under 15…
Recent flooding has extended the dengue fever season this year, the National Dengue Control Program said on Tuesday.
Officials added that more than 12,000 people, primarily children, had been hospitalised so far this year with the mosquito-borne infection.
Dr Ngan Chantha, head of the NDCP, said “12,392 people had been hospitalised with dengue fever in the first nine months of this year, compared to 9,582 in total last year”…
At a Sept 11 meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Sok An and Ganesh C. Thakur, President of the U.S.-based Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), plans were discussed about the SPE providing training and expertise for the Kingdom’s oil and gas sector, according to a statement from the Cambodian government. The SPE wants Cambodian National Petroleum Authority (CNPA) officials to become members of SPE so they can take training courses via teleconferences. The SPE will send lecturers to train its members, without any cost to be paid by the trainees…The SPE now has more than 100,000 members in 118 countries worldwide. Cambodia plans to start drilling for offshore oil and gas on Dec 12 next year.
A carbon credit project is in the works for the Seima biodiversity areas in Kartie and Mondulkiri provinces. During a meeting between Chan Sarun, Minister of Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries and Colin Poole, Director of Asia Programs for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WLCS) on Sept 15, it was decided that the carbon credit project will cover Seima area and experts will be sent to study and make an assessment for the project sometime in the middle of next year. The protection plan for the biodiversity areas in both provinces will ensure the protection of animals, and promote tree growing, eco-tourism sites and resorts.
According to the Copenhagen Accord hosted in Denmark, developed countries had to provide US$ 30 billion for 2009-2012 to kick start emissions reduction measures for the less-developed countries and promised to offer US$ 100 billion for long term finance a year by 2020.
“Cambodia needs approximately US$ 200 million annually for climate change adaptations and that aid should be new, not the same as the financial assistance from the Official Development Assistance (ODA),” said Mr. Sum Thy, Director of the Climate Change Department.
He stressed that the industrial countries are the major cause of climate change and they have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and offer both technological and financial assistance to the LDC like Cambodia, which is the most vulnerable one.
Cambodia suffered the influence of climate change and human and capital resource effects, especially since people’s awareness of climate change is limited. Therefore, Cambodia needs evaluation and faces financial need in order to fight against climate change,” he mentioned…
The China’s Taiwan leading bank, Mega International (ICBC), on September 30th, opened its first branch in Phnom Penh, aiming to attract more Taiwanese investors to Cambodia and boosting further business.
“The Mega ICBC will bring capital investment injection into the economy of Cambodia, employment opportunities, upgrading the know-how of the banking industry, providing more funds to local enterprises, offering better banking services to the customers and to help boom the economy, especially in the factor of international trade,” Chay You Cai, Chairman of the Mega ICBC Phnom Penh branch said during the inauguration.
MegaICBC is the most internationalized bank in Taiwan, which has 108 branches in Taiwan, and 32 overseas branches, representatives and subsidiaries. “Mega ICBC Phnom Penh Branch commences to serve in Cambodia and become the 33rd overseas outpost of Mega ICBC, “ he added. Mega ICBC is the sole US dollar clearing and settlement bank in Taiwan which is only one of two banks in Taiwan to supply Chinese RMB banknotes to customers and other local banks in Taiwan…
Astra Resources, parent company of Australia’s Astra Mining, will finalise within two months the acquisition of a 222-square-kilometre gold concession in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province, the company announced yesterday.
Astra, which listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange September 30, is aiming for large and speedy gold production in the Kingdom’s remote northeast. Some familiar with the industry, however, have questioned the ambitions of the little-known company…
Freight shipments through Phnom Penh Autonomous Port saw year-on-year growth of 30 per cent in the first nine months of the year, according to official PPAP figures.
The total number of twenty-foot equivalent units that passed through the port hit 60,810 between January and August, up from 46,955 TEUs in the same period in 2010.
The port saw large increases in the shipment of goods such as agricultural products, construction materials and garment, textile and footwear products, PPAP Director General Hei Bavy told the Post yesterday…
