South Korean investors were in Phnom Penh yesterday seeking opportunities in electronics manufacturing, an industry that experts have said could represent the next stage of growth for Cambodia’s economy.
Eleven delegates from Changwon City, South Korea, a manufacturing hub in the country, met with 70 local entrepreneurs, researching the possibility of bringing their electronics, machinery and automotive appliances businesses to the Kingdom…
Freight shipments through Phnom Penh Autonomous Port, Cambodia’s second largest port, increased more than 30 per cent year-on-year through October, according to official figures…
Camcontrol revenues for the first nine months of the year hit US$7.9 million, surpassing the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s revenue goal of $6 million for the year.
Kong Putheara, director of the Ministry of Commerce’s statistics department, this week said the unexpected growth came from an increase in imports and exports…
The World Trade Organisation today will conclude its first-ever review of Cambodia’s trade policies and practices and issue its concluding remarks.
The trade review, which began on November 1, is the first time the Kingdom, which was the first least-developed country to fully accede to the WTO in 2004, will involve WTO state members examining the trade climate here.
The WTO Secretariat report compiled for the review notes that international trade is the “driving force behind much of Cambodia’s recent economic growth”…
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday added his two cents to the ongoing debate on what Cambodia’s debt to China actually is, declaring it stands at only US$2 billion.
At a ground-breaking ceremony marking the beginning of construction on Phnom Penh’s Cambodia-China Friendship Bridge, the premier rejected estimates he claimed unspecified opposition parties had made that the debt stood at $6 billion…
A logistics firm and two garment manufacturers planned to list on the Cambodia Securities Exchange during the second half of 2012, underwriter Phnom Penh Securities said yesterday.
The companies are the first known private businesses to confirm their intentions of listing on the Kingdom’s still-dormant bourse.
Manufacturing companies Grand International Ltd and TY Fashion Co Ltd signed initial public-offering preparation contracts in June and July, respectively, Phnom Penh Securities CEO Stephen Hsu said.
Olair Dry Port Worldwide Co Ltd, a logistics firm, had reached an underwriting deal in mid-July, he said.
The plans – among several rumoured private listings – were a welcome signal from the private sector, as so far only the state-owned firms Phnom Penh Water Authority, Sihanoukville Autonomous Port and Telecom Cambodia were expected to hold offerings, Hsu said…
Increased fishing yields due to floods have led to an increase in rental fees for the Kingdom’s fishing lots compared to 2010, according to official data.
Revenues from bidding on 52 fishing lots in Phnom Penh and four other provinces increased by US$735,000 year to date, Nao Thuok, director general of fisheries at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, said…
Cambodia has granted Chinese timber company Shengda Wood a 22,600-hectare timber concession in Kratie and Strung Treng provinces, officials said.
The Shenzhen Stock Exchange-listed company would export wood from the 70-year concession to supply a depleted market in China, Li Jie, a management official in Sichuan, told the Post, although he declined to disclose the price of the concession…
Labour legislation in Cambodia is so weak and so often ignored that half the Kingdom’s children between the ages of seven and 14 participate in the workforce, the world’s largest federation of unions has told the World Trade Organisation General Council in Geneva.
Children, women and ethnic and indigenous minorities suffer the most under the Kingdom’s “corrupt” enforcement of labour law, according to the International Trade Union Confederation, which has 150 million members.
Yesterday it presented its report detailing how Cambodia falls short of international labour standards, along with a list of recommendations to the WTO, which is conducting a trade policy review of Cambodia concluding tomorrow.
“Poor compliance with international labour standards, especially with regard to trade-union rights, child labour and forced labour” form the key criticisms of the Kingdom’s employment environment…
The government had set aside 3,000 tonnes of rice seeds to distribute to farmers whose crops were destroyed by flooding and had so far distributed 1,900 tonnes of rice to those affected by the floods in 18 provinces, the National Committee for Disaster Management said yesterday.
NCDM spokesman Keo Vy also said that most of those who had been displaced in 16 of the 18 provinces hit by flooding had returned to their homes. Only those displaced in Kampong Chhnang and Kampong Thom provinces remained unable to return to their homes due to high floodwaters, he said…
Approved investments in Cambodia reached $5.6 billion during the first nine months of the year, a 305 percent increase compared to the same period the year before, according to data from the Council of the Development of Cambodia (CDC).
Last year’s approved investments during the same period totaled $1.4 billion…
About 200 residents of Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila community burned tires and threw rocks at the Prampi Makara district office yesterday, demanding that the district governor solve a long-running housing dispute between them and powerful construction firm Phanimex, which they say has failed to abide by a 2003 agreement to re-house them in exchange for land they were evicted from…
The US is scheduled today to sign off on another $20 million in funding for aid projects in Cambodia, according to a US Embassy statement issued yesterday.
One project will “strengthen the ability of civil society, the private sector, and the government to address food security and climate change challenges in Cambodia,” the statement said…
The Cambodian Embassy in Malaysia returned abused Cambodian maids, including women who were raped by their employers, to work at maid recruitment agencies in that country, a new report by Human Rights Watch claims.
The New York-based rights group also said Cambodian police colluded with labor recruitment agencies to pressure abused Cambodian maids to remain in training programs and not to file legal complaints against agencies where they suffered abuse.
The 105-page report, which was released yesterday at a news conference in Phnom Penh, documented a wide range of abuses of Cambodian women working as maids in Malaysia, including debt bondage, underage recruitment and forced confinement by agencies, as well as physical and sexual abuse by Malaysian employers, who also frequently withheld workers’ salaries and passports…
The total value of approved construction projects in the Kingdom soared 97 per cent year-on-year through September, according to official figures, reaching nearly US$1 billion.
The number of projects fell to 1,689 for the first nine months of 2011, down from 1,718 in the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction. But the total value of those projects reached $999.3 million, a significant jump from the $508.1 million in 2010…
Cambodia could borrow US$1.1 billion from other countries in 2012, 75 per cent more than this year, to help repair infrastructure damaged in flooding and support efforts to increase rice exports to one million tonnes by 2015, a senior official said yesterday.
Cheam Yeap, chairman of the Finance Commission, said the borrowing, which has to be approved by parliament, would come in the form of concessionary, 40-year loans at low interest rates.
He declined to say which countries might offer the loans but said that of Cambodian’s current debt of around $8 billion, some $6 billion was owed to its closest ally, China. Another $1.5 billion is owed to Russia and $317 million to the United States, he added…
Workers at a garment factory that was temporarily shut after more than 200 women collapsed in two mass fainting incidents last week gathered yesterday at the facility in Kampong Speu province for a Buddhist ceremony intended to rid the factory of evil spirits.
Pheng Songoun, a representative of Anful Garments Manufacturing, said the ceremony was held to reassure the roughly 1,000 employees ahead of their return to work today that evil spirits had been expelled from the factory, which was closed by labour officials following the incident.
Those who attended offered rice to four monks who in turn blessed the women and chanted prayers in front of the facility where workers fainted on Monday and Thursday last week…
Hours after downgrading Cambodia’s long-term sovereign credit rating, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said it had also decided to lower the credit rating for Acleda Bank to B from B+, though it maintained its outlook for the bank as stable.
The decision follows a similar decision in September by Moody’s, another ratings agency, to change its outlook on Acleda Bank’s financial strength to ‘negative’ from ‘stable’. Moody’s also downgraded its rating of the bank’s local currency deposits to Ba2 from Ba1…
As reports continue to flood in detailing rampant abuse of Cambodian migrant workers abroad, the Cambodian Migrant Workers’ Association (CMWA) said it would be registering with the Ministry of Interior today as the country’s first migrant workers representative organisation, according to its director.
“The idea is it would be for migrant workers to have an actual organization comprised of workers advocating on behalf of workers,” said David Welsh, country director at the American Center for International Labor Solidarity…
More than two weeks after a ban on sending maids to Malaysia began, work on a bilateral agreement that would protect Cambodian maids working in Malaysia has not begun, officials said yesterday.
Ho Vuthy, deputy director general at the Ministry of Labor’s department of labor, said the ministry had not yet contacted Malaysian officials, nor had it begun to draft a proposed memorandum of understanding that would protect Cambodian maids in Malaysia…
Prime Minister Hun Sen suspended the sending of maids on October 15 following numerous reports of abuse, exploitation and human trafficking by agencies and Malaysian employers. The Labor Ministry let another 3,000 workers depart, but the number fell into the dozens after the private agencies introduced a voluntary complete ban later…
