Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday urged the economic leaders of the Asean bloc to go through with a plan to double a bailout pool, funded largely by China, Japan and South Korea, to prevent future financial crises in the region.
Opening the Asean Finance Ministers’ Meeting in Phnom Penh, Mr. Hun Sen highlighted the risk of future financial crises as economies in the West continue to experience slow growth.
While economic growth across Asean was 4.3 percent last year, there is still a risk that exports to the US and countries in the European Union could experience a downturn, he said. …
Just hours before Chinese President Hu Jintao landed in Phnom Penh on Friday, a group of dismayed Koh Kong province villagers whose land is under threat from a sprawling Chinese tourism project were escorted onto a bus and sent back home before they were able to file their petition at the Chinese Embassy.
A group of 15 police and military police officers stood outside the A5 guesthouse in Phnom Penh’s Tuol Kok district in the early morning and prevented the 33 villagers from traveling to the Chinese Embassy on Mao Tse Tung Boulevard, villagers and officials said.
The expelling of the villager comes ahead of next week’s Asean Summit in Phnom Penh and sends out a strong message to protesters and activists who may be hoping to use the presence of the region’s leaders to have their voices heard.
The villagers who were packed into the bus by police are part of some 1,100 families in Kiri Sakor and Botum Sakor districts of Koh Kong whose homes have been swallowed by a $3.8 billion tourism project being built by China’s Union Development Group (UDG). The project, situated on 36,000 hectares of land, looks out across the Koh Sdech archipelago. …
Koh Kong deputy provincial governor Sun Dara arrived at the guesthouse in the early hours of the morning to tell the villagers that they must leave Phnom Penh and solve their qualms with the local authorities in Koh Kong, she said. …
Contacted on Friday, Mr. Dara confirmed that he had ushered the villagers back to Koh Kong after authorities in Phnom Penh informed him that villagers from his province had arrived to file a petition at the Chinese Embassy. …
“I explained to them that we should settle the matter in the province, especially because their march to the embassy would cause disorder and a security problem for President Hu Jintao.”…
Four workshops at the Asean Peoples’ Forum concerning pressing issues such as land rights and events in Burma were blocked by the owner of the venue where the forum was being held on Friday, as they were considered too politically sensitive, the organizer said.
Out of the 25 workshops scheduled to take place at the three-day forum, which ends Saturday, the meetings on land rights, mass evictions, environmental concerns and recent events in Burma were deemed too controversial by the owner of the Lucky Star Hotel in Tuol Kok district.
“The hotel said it’s politically sensitive and they don’t want the issues discussed in their hotel. They said the issues are for the country’s leaders to resolve, not for us to discuss,” said Thida Khus, head of local rights NGO Silaka and head of the planning committee of the forum. …
Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said he had “no idea” if government officials had given the order to shut down the workshops. …
Chinese President Hu Jintao and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed here Saturday to advance the comprehensive relations of strategic cooperation and partnership between their two countries.
In a meeting, the two leaders pledged to expand mutually beneficial cooperation in all fields and to double the annual two-way trade to 5 billion U.S. dollars by 2017.
They also witnessed the signing of a number of cooperation documents, covering infrastructure, human resources, economy and tourism.
Hu said bilateral relations have withstood the test of time and vicissitudes in the international arena since the two countries established diplomatic ties more than 50 years ago.
“As both international and regional situations are undergoing profound and complex changes, continued enrichment and development of the comprehensive relations of strategic cooperation and partnership between China and Cambodia serves the fundamental interests and common aspirations of the two peoples,” he said. …
Net profits at Acleda Bank increased by 86% to $49.4 million in 2011 as the company grew both its deposits and loan portfolio. In a statement released on Friday, Acleda said that loans grew by 35.4 percent to $989.4 million, while deposits at the bank grew by 25.9 percent to $1.15 billion. In Channy, CEO of Acleda Bank, said the strong growth in profits was due to the bank’s bullish strategy to disburse loans in all of the major sectors of the economy, particularly in agriculture and trade. …
Chinese President Hu Jintao asked close economically Cambodia on Saturday not to push talks on the vexed issue of the South China Sea “too fast” as he pledged to double bilateral trade to $5 billion and announced fresh aid to the impoverished country.
Cambodia holds the rotating chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year, giving it influence over the agenda and talks over resolving growing tensions in the disputed maritime area. …
The Svay Rieng Provincial Court yesterday questioned two of the three female garment factory workers who were shot during a protest at a special economic zone (SEZ) in Bavet City in February, the provincial prosecutor said yesterday.
Keo Nea, 18; Bun Chenda, 21; and Nuth Sokhorn, 23, filed complaints against then-Bavet City Governor Chhouk Bundith, the sole suspect in the Feb. 20 shooting at Manhattan SEZ, requesting compensation ranging from $40,000 to $50,000. …
Ms. Chenda claims that she was walking to the bathroom when she was shot, but the unidentified man suggested she was in the protest throwing rocks. …
Cambodia is close to a deal that would ship as much as 20,000 tonnes of milled rice to Indonesia, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Thon Virak, director of state-owned rice exporter Green Trade and chairman of Federation of Milled Rice Exporters Association, said Green Trade has been in discussions with Indonesia’s Green Mineral Resource (Cambodia), and that an agreement is waiting for approval by both countries’ governments. …
Government officials did not, and Lao students could not, attend yesterday’s Asean Peoples’ Forum in Phnom Penh, where more than 1,500 members of civil society groups discussed the region’s most pressing issues, including human rights, poverty, land usurping and domestic violence.
The three-day forum, which is not officially recognized by Cambodia or other Asean governments, found itself competing yesterday with a mirror three-day “Asean people’s forum” in Chaktomuk Conference Hall—which was organized, supported and attended by senior government officials.
The dueling people’s forums in Phnom Penh this week underlined the deep divide between the region’s civil society organizations; on one side, the organizations that are critical of their governments, and on the other, state-sponsored organizations that were showcased this week ahead of the Asean Summit. …
A representative from the Lao Embassy said the order came from the Asean Department of Foreign Affairs in Laos. “This forum is not the forum [the Laos government] wished for them to attend…. The Asean Department of Laos prefers them to attend the forum that started yesterday,” said the representative. …
The Japanese government sealed the deal yesterday on an agreement to provide Cambodia with a US$86 million loan for a project that will supply Siem Reap town residents with water from the Tonle Sap lake and alleviate their need for water drawn from wells.
The 40-year loan will curb the pumping of well water from beneath the Angkor Wat temple complex, which is thought to have an adverse effect on the world heritage site, the Japanese ambassador said yesterday.
The agreement, signed yesterday at the Ministry of Foreign affairs by Foreign Minister Hor Nahmong and Japanese Ambassador Kuroki Masafumi, with Prime Minister Hun Sen in attendance, launched a project that, when finished, will provide Siem Reap town with about 600,000 cubic metres of water a day from Tonle Sap Lake. …
In an effort to stop their homes from being swallowed up by a Chinese mega-tourism project, Koh Kong villagers said they will submit a petition to the Chinese Embassy today, calling for intervention from visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Villager representative Tith Ten, 54, from Kiri Sakor district’s Prek Khsach commune, said that a group of 20 villagers plan to bring a petition thumbprinted by 349 people to the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh as Mr. Hu arrives for his visit, which also coincides with next week’s Asean Summit.
Since 2008, the Chinese company Union Development Group (UDG) has begun clearing—with permission from the government—36,000 hectares of forest on the Koh Kong province coastline to build a $3.8 billion tourism zone with hotels, golf courses and an airport. …
Rights groups pushed for increased employment of disabled Cambodians and the ratification of a UN convention on their rights at the launch of the ASEAN Disability Forum yesterday.
Ngin Saorath, executive director of the Cambodian Disabled People’s Organisation, said groups will draft a declaration over the three-day forum reflecting the national implications of disability issues, and submit it to the ASEAN secretariat.
They will also push for ASEAN countries to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, he added. Thus far, only Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand have ratified the convention. …
The Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court yesterday once again declined to receive a joint complaint from villagers in Kompong Tralach district embroiled in a land dispute with the wife of Industry Minister Suy Sem.
Chhuon Siven, provincial clerk director, said that the court could not take the complaint from the 37 villagers of Lor Peang village since it was filed jointly and has advised the villagers to file it again individually. …
The villagers are claiming that Chea Kheang and her firm KDC Development Co illegally forged 105 land titles covering property from 51 families over 145 hectares of land in the province in an ongoing dispute dating back to 2007. …
More than 200 families in Prey Veng province protested outside the Pea Reang district police office on Wednesday against electricity providers Elisa Hour and Electricite du Cambodge (EdC), which have both refused to lower electricity rates, despite having made a promise to do so three months ago.
In January, state-owned company EdC promised villagers that electric fees would be reduced from 3,000 riel (about $0.75) per kilowatt-hour to 1,700 riel (about $0.45). But prices have still not come down, villagers said yesterday. …
State-run Electricite du Cambodge (EdC), the main provider of electricity in the country, has appealed to residents of Phnom Penh to reduce electricity use due to a power shortage, an EdC official said yesterday.
The company is only able to produce 70 percent of the city’s electricity demand, as serious water shortfalls have caused the Kirirom hydropower dam in Kompong Speu to stop working and significantly reduced power production at Kampot’s Kamchay dam, said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. …
The National Bank of Cambodia this week signed a Memorandum of Under-standing with the State Bank of Vietnam that would allow for the exchange of information to fight money laundering and terrorism financing.
The MoU, signed by NBC Governor Chea Chanto and SBV Governor Nguyen Van Binh in Phnom Penh on Wednesday, will allow the individual countries to leverage the databases and information held by the other country in combatting the two issues. …
Cambodia is close to a deal that would ship as much as 20,000 tonnes of milled rice to Indonesia, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Thon Virak, director of state-owned rice exporter Green Trade and chairman of Federation of Milled Rice Exporters Association, said Green Trade has been in discussions with Indonesia’s Green Mineral Resource (Cambodia), and that an agreement is waiting for approval by both countries’ governments. …
Myanmar’s moves toward economic and political reform would not subtract from Cambodia’s regular stream of foreign investment, experts and insiders said – at least not in the short run.
Word of an investor-friendly Myanmar has spread quickly with the US’s partial waiver on trade sanctions in early February, and some of the region’s business players have called the country “ground zero for investment”.
But Cambodia’s more than decade-long claim to political stability should eclipse Myanmar’s piecemeal reform, which a regime change in late 2010 set into motion after nearly 50 years of military rule.
“Political stability is the hot button for Cambodia, where they have gotten it right for foreign investors, and that’s a place where Myanmar can’t really compete yet,” Gordon Peters, manager at Emerging Markets Consulting in Cambodia, said this week. …
The Cambodian government has reclassified 12,000 hectares of wildlife sanctuary to make way for agro-industry concessions for three companies, according to the royal book issued on March 19.
The land has been cut from the Kulen Promtep Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest protected area in Cambodia, which covers 402,500 hectares of land at the juncture of the Preah Vihear, Oddar Meanchey and Siem Reap provincial borders. …
