With a focus on the NGO draft law and allegations of government interference in the Khmer Rouge tribunal, international rights group Human Rights Watch blasted Cambodia’s rights record in its annual report yesterday.
The government was quick to hit back at the criticism, saying that HRW was far removed from the actual situation and unrealistic in its appraisal of human rights in Cambodia…
Strong growth in garment, textile, and agricultural exports drove a 42.7 per cent increase in Cambodia’s total exports for 2011, official Ministry of Commerce data shows.
The Kingdom exported $4.98 billion in goods last year, compared with $3.49 billion the year before.
Market diversification and a relaxing of rules of origin in the Euro zone fuelled last year’s growth, insiders and experts say…
The Documentation Centre of Cambodia has joined a coalition of government ministries on an study tour to establish a tourism plan in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng district in Oddar Meanchey, officials said yesterday.
Anlong Veng was the last stronghold for the Khmer Rouge after they were swept out of Phnom Penh by Vietnamese forces, and is home to the final resting places of notorious Khmer Rouge leaders Pol Pot and Ta Mok…
The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday that it plans to raise its annual production of organic vegetables from 120 tons to 600 tons by the end of 2015.
Lim Sokun Darun, program coordinator at Cedac, said that the decision to increase organic produce came after his organization had noticed an uptick in demand, especially in Phnom Penh…
The government said yesterday that a gold mine in Kompong Cham province that has damaged about 1 square km of land with chemical waste would cost at least $4 million to clean up.
Speaking at a workshop in Phnom Penh on revenue transparency, Sim Sisokhaly, director of the mineral resources department in the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME) said that the mine in Mermot district has caused widespread environmental damage in the area. The area has been mined since 1985 and operations have resulted in chemicals running into irrigation systems for rice fields…
Workers will begin clearing forestland in Stung Treng province as early as next week in preparation for the controversial 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam, district officials and villagers said yesterday.
The hydropower project, funded by Vietnam Electricity (EVN), will flood tens of thousands of hectares of forest and displace 5,000 mostly indigenous minority villagers in Sesan district, according to project documents.
Although plans for the dam have been in the works since 2008, villagers were not officially informed of their eviction until last May, and there is still a lack of clarity on where they will be resettled…
The number of criminal charges meted out to villagers embroiled in land disputes rose by more than 50 percent in 2011 compared to the previous year, according to figures released by the rights group Adhoc yesterday.
The rights group found that the courts charged 475 villagers embroiled in 220 land disputes last year, compared to 306 charges laid in 2010. The number of people that fled their homes for fear of arrest also rose to 335 people, an 88 percent rise compared to 2010. Out of all those who were arrested last year, 133 were charged, 56 were detained and 84 were released…
Violence erupted yesterday in Kratie province’s Snuol district where six people were shot and injured when RCAF soldiers working for a rubber company opened fire on a crowd of villagers who were trying to stop the company from clearing land in the area, police and human rights workers said…
Kratie Provincial Governor Kham Phoeun declined to comment on the shooting, while Snuol’s district governor, Iv Saphum, had little to say, but explained that TTY Co Ltd had been granted an 8,000-hectare rubber concession in 2008 in Pi Thnou commune…
Two more Vietnamese banks have announced they will apply for licences to operate in Cambodia, according to media reports.
If accepted, Maritime Bank and Saigon-Hanoi Commercial Bank (SHB) would bring the number of Vietnamese banks in Cambodia to six, National Bank of Cambodia officials said yesterday.
Experts say the banks’ entry is well-timed to cater to the influx of Vietnamese businesses to Cambodia…
The World Bank yesterday predicted gross domestic product to grow 6.5 percent this year, though it said that economic conditions could sour if the economies of Cambodia’s largest export markets in the US and Europe deteriorate.
In an economic report outlining prospects for all of the world’s economies, the World Bank said that Cambodia’s strong performance in 2011 of 6 percent GDP growth is expected to continue in 2012 even as growth in countries such as China is expected to slow down…
Faced with continued illegal logging in Prey Long forest, villagers in Kompong Thom province’s Sandan district once again took the initiative to seize a large haul of illegal timber from local loggers. Villagers, however, said that local officials are complicit in the logging ring and are now pressuring them to return the confiscated wood.
On Monday, villagers in Mean Rith commune spotted a truck transporting a haul of luxury wood and – together with the Prey Long People’s Network, a local community group – about 40 villagers decided to stop the truck and seize its load, said Moeun Chhun, a local member of the network…
More than 11,000 families were affected by government-granted economic land concessions in 2011, nearly 3,000 more families than were affected the previous year, according to figures released yesterday by local rights group Licadho.
A total of more than 2 million hectares of the country’s forests and farmland have now been granted to agro-industrial companies by the government as economic land concessions, another rights group, Adhoc, reported in November…
Buoyed by strong demand from the economies of Europe and North America, the total amount of garment, shoe and textile exports that left Cambodia last year was on target to surpass the $4 billion mark, dwarfing 2010′s total of $2.88 billion, the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) said yesterday.
According to the most recent data released by the Ministry of Commerce, Cambodia exported $3.89 billion of garments, textiles and shoes in the first 11 months of 2011.
Cambodian exports to the European Union, which dropped tariffs on goods from Cambodia last year, increased by 62 percent to $1 billion between January and November, while exports to the US – Cambodia’s largest market for garment exports – increased by 14 percent to $1.89 billion. Shoe exports to the EU also surged, hitting $124.5 million, a rise of 41 percent.
Manufacturers and economists said that the data had exceeded expectations and that the large increase in exports was in part due to rising labor costs in countries such as China pushing manufacturers to set up factories in other countries, such as Cambodia…
The owner of development firm Phan Imex Company said yesterday that 64 families from the capital’s Borei Keila community who were demanding compensation for houses demolished on January 3 did not have the documents to prove they had owned a house on the site.
Phan Imex president Suy Sophan told the Post yesterday that her company would not compensate these families for any losses, but would offer them “humanitarian” payments of US$200 to $500.
“Most of the protesters are those who have bought a house after 2003 or rented houses at Borei Keila,” she said…
Cambodia’s biggest solar power initiative to date – expected to provide electricity to 12,000 households in off-grid areas – will be completed on January 31, according to officials involved with the project.
Yiang Tal, chief of administration at the Rural Electrification Fund, said more than 10,000 of a total of 12,000 solar home systems had already been installed in Ratanakiri, Preah Vihear, Siem Reap and four other provinces as part of a World Bank-funded project.
Some villagers are already using their newly installed panels. Em Vanntha, a resident of Samrong village, in Pursat province, said he signed up for the program two months ago and had a 50-watt panel installed in his home in December. Previously, he relied on batteries for electricity. Em Vanntha said the US$5 a month he now paid for his solar home system was less than he paid to regularly recharge old batteries or buy new batteries…
The Cambodia Securities Exchange may launch as soon as March or April, according to an official at the Korea Exchange, the Kingdom’s partner in launching its stock market.
Final preparations for the CSX’s initial public offerings should be complete at that time, Pat Gil-soo, senior vice-president for global business development, said yesterday.
“I hope to visit [Phnom Penh] again in late March or early April for the opening ceremony,” he said…
Whether it is dancing pop stars or plays on national pride, dramatically increasing budgets for beer advertising took Cambodia’s TV sets and public spaces by storm in 2011.
Beer advertising surged 164 per cent year-on-year in 2011, according to data from Indochina Research Ltd, making it one of the fastest-growing areas in Cambodian advertising.
Beer companies spent more than US$5 million on advertising in Cambodia in 2011, $1 million more than ads for cars or food products – and insiders say the beer ad figure is set to continue to increase this year.
In 2011 there were also some of Cambodia’s biggest TV advertising campaigns, attempts from the increasing number of market contenders to brand their brews.
“Beer has definitely become an important part of [the advertising industry],” Mean Samol, Cambodia Brewery Ltd’s deputy marketing manager, said yesterday.
“Beer [advertising] is becoming more and more competitive right now.”…
In a sign of “improving” relations between Cambodia and the United States, the Kingdom will host US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this year, officials confirmed yesterday. The visit would be the first by a sitting US president.
Joseph Yun, the US deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said yesterday that Clinton and Obama would make separate visits in July and November, respectively. “We expect to have our Secretary of State here in July, as well as our President for the [Asean-US] summit,” he said, following a closed-door meeting with Ouch Borith, secretary of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ouch Borith confirmed his counterpart’s statement. “The participation by President Obama during the Asean-US summit in November in territorial Cambodia is a sign that confirms that the relationship between Cambodia and the US is improving,” Ouch Borith said, adding that further details of the visit could not yet be provided due to “security concerns”…
Asia Golden Rice (AGR), Thailand’s second-largest rice exporter, will invest $47 million to build milling plants in Cambodia capable of processing up to 1 million tons of rice per year, according to a company representative and reports from the Thai news media yesterday.
“This will be the first time [AGR] will be investing in Cambodia,” said Jakapun Tontrasip, a representative from the company’s export sales department.
According to Thai media reports, AGR President Sombat Chalermwutinan said the company plans to build rice mills in Kampot province with the capacity to process 1 million tons of paddy rice a year. This will be a joint venture with an unnamed “leading Cambodian business group”, said Mr Chalermwutinan…
The government has granted China’s Xinwei Telecom a license to become the country’s tenth mobile phone operator and the second firm to roll out so-called 4G technology, the fastest and most advanced network currently available on the market.
Those in the telecommunications industry said that the entry into the market of yet another company – the local firm Digital Star Media also launched operations with a 4G network last year – was a risky move considering how over-saturated the sector has become…
