The Venerable Sann Leang, executive director of NGO Environmental More than 500 villagers held a march in eastern Cambodia Friday to protest a controversial dam project on the Mekong River in Laos they say is undergoing construction despite a pledge to halt progress while officials conduct a potential impact study.
The protest against the U.S. $3.8 billion Xayaburi Dam, in the capital city of Kompong Cham province, was led by monks and included students, activists, and staff from a number of nongovernmental organizations.
The group called on the leaders of the four Southeast Asian nations downstream from the dam—Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam—to put an end to construction at the site, citing concerns that the project would negatively impact millions of people in the region and irreparably damage the environment.
Development and an organizer of the march, said the villagers sought to raise awareness of the negative impacts of the dam, which he said would include the destruction of natural resources that riparian communities rely on to make a living. “We are raising awareness for the people who live in Kompong Cham province near the Mekong River.”…the monk said. …
Two foreign-owned garment manufacturers will submit disclosure documents to Cambodia’s capital market regulator next month, the companies’ underwriter Phnom Penh Securities Firm Plc. said yesterday.
The initial public offerings for the two private companies, expected by the end of the year, should boost action on the Cambodia Securities Exchange. Submission preparation for QMI International and TY Fashion, both Taiwanese companies, was “99 per cent complete”, Phnom Penh Securities chief executive Stephen Hsu said.
“All the financial reports are finished. We will be ready to submit the disclosure documents to the [Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia] next month,” he said by phone.
Listing dates for the remaining state-owned firms were unclear yesterday. Telecom Cambodia has not designated a specific date, but insiders said the firm is expected to list in January. Sihanoukville Autonomous Port earlier this year announced a July listing date, but officials yesterday said the deadline was unrealistic.
Officials and securities firms yesterday showed little distress at the imminent retirement of Ek Sonn Chan, the man credited with straightening out and preparing the capital’s public water utility for its initial public offering in April.
A letter from the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME) obtained yesterday by the Post said the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority general director will leave his position on July 1 after a nearly 20-year tenure.
Sim Sitha, the director of Sihanouk Water Supply, will replace him. One insider compared the changing of the guard at PPWSA to the death of Apple’s Steve Jobs. …
Cambodian villagers demonstrated on Friday against a controversial Lao hydropower dam that activists say is being built in defiance of an agreement to assess its potentially damaging impact on millions of people first.
About 200 villagers whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River urged a halt to the Thai-led construction of the $3.5 billion Xayaburi dam, which has angered Cambodia’s government and triggered a rare rebuke by Laos’s biggest ally, Vietnam. …
Cambodian rice millers will increase their capital to purchase unmilled rice this season as bankers agreed to provide more loans, insiders said on Monday.
Baitong will increase its capital to purchase up to 140,000 tonnes of fragrant unmilled rice, compared to last year’s 70,000 tonnes said Phou Puy, president of the Federation of Rice Millers Associations and the Baitong Rice Export Company. Working capital would increase from US$28 million to $50 million this year as fragrant unmilled rice cost $450 per tonne, an increase from $400 per tonne he said.
Acleda Bank will increase loans for the agricultural sector to $200 million, with a total of $1.35 billion over the next year, an increase of $50 million from the year before, In Channy, CEO and president of Acleda Bank, said. “We have increased loans for this sector because of the royal government’s policies and in order to support this sector,” he said. …
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s June order that land be cut from economic land concessions and returned to displaced villagers – a move that has alternately inspired gratitude and scepticism – now has a high-profile public face: one of his sons.
Hun Manith, deputy chief of Hun Sen’s cabinet and his third-oldest child, was appointed deputy secretary-general of the National General Secretariat for Land Disputes, according to an entry in the Royal Book released on June 15.
The appointment makes Manith second-in-command of the agency, which was tasked by the premier with measuring and granting land to people displaced by land disputes….
Manulife Financial Corp, Canada’s largest life insurer, has set up shop in Cambodia, hoping to tap into an emerging middle class in the southeast Asian country.
The move is part of the Toronto-based company’s strategy of targeting profit growth in Asia as part of its plan to reach net profit to C$4 billion ($3.90 billion) by 2015. …
Keo Kounila is Cambodian blogger who recently attend the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany.
After meeting amid some 1,500 participants, she told VOA Khmer she had garnered new ideas to help develop Cambodia, including organizing seminars to help university students make better use of computers and the Internet.
She would also encourage companies to educate young people on Internet use, which would increase the number of users—and their profits. …
Forestry Administration officials have seized equipment valued at $1.5 million from a Banteay Meanchey province biofuel plantation, which is being investigated for fraud in the UK, company and forestry officials said yesterday.
Sustainable Agro Energy’s assets were frozen in February and investigators at the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office believe that the company was run as a Ponzi scheme.
The company’s British owner, Gregg Fryett, has denied defrauding investors in the UK on the promise, which was never fulfilled, that biofuel would be produced from jatropha trees at his plantation in Cambodia. …
An appeals court Wednesday ordered the release of 13 women who were jailed for protesting being evicted from their homes without adequate compensation, in a case that had critics had highlighted as an example of injustice.
The women cheered in the courtroom, their supporters applauded and observers from foreign embassies, including the United States, smiled in the audience after the judge’s ruling.
“Finally, justice has been done for us,” defendant Heng Mom said tearfully, before being driven away again in a prison van. …
The 13 Boeung Kak women imprisoned after a three-hour trial last month will be released today, the Court of Appeal announced after a hearing this morning.
A panel of three judges upheld the two charges against the women, declaring they were still guilty of occupying state land and obstructing public officials in aggravating circumstances, but reduced their sentences from two and a half years to one month and three days – the length of time they have already served in Prey Sar prison.
Scenes of jubilation followed as supporters of the 13 women danced and sang in the streets; however, police clashed with supporters outside the court during the trial…
Decked out in camouflage military uniforms shipped fresh from Indonesia and wearing soldier’s caps emblazoned with the Ministry of Land Management’s logo, 1,100 students who have volunteered to measure land in an ambitious titling project attended a speech by Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday.
The uniformed volunteers, who gathered at the Koh Pich convention center as part of a two-day training session on measuring land and collecting data from villagers living in state forests and on economic land concessions (ELC), listened as the prime minister praised their civic involvement, his titling project, and various government agencies.
“I thank all student communities and their parents,” Mr. Hun Sen said to the students, who will be deployed across the country as provincial governments ramp up their land titling efforts in the wake of Mr. Hun Sen’s six-month deadline to issue land titles to all villagers living inside land concessions and state forests.
“Give them the land title and their house building will increase, the growth will increase,” Mr. Hun Sen said. “Now, they do not dare to build houses because they live in fear since [the land title] is not clear. So we have to facilitate them as legal [occupants] by giving them a primary land title,” he said. ….
After praising the titling project, Mr. Hun Sen used much of his speech to slam news reports about land concessions he signed in the wake of his announced May 7 moratorium. …
But Mr. Hun Sen swung back yesterday at news reports on the concessions as well as “those who have claimed themselves as legal experts” saying they were the ones distorting the truth. …
“If you don’t make corrections in the newspaper, we will correct through television and radio,” Mr. Hun Sen said, before daring the country’s English-language newspapers to publish his moratorium order in full.
”If they dare not to print it, they are cowardly newspapers. Are you brave enough to print?” Mr. Hun Sen asked.
”If the land is not yet privatized, the prime minister must issue a sub-decree for privatization. It is one of the procedural steps… these are the procedures. Do the [newspapers] know the law? Or do they just have the intention to destroy?”
While the financial problems of Europe created a worried mood for the Group of 20 leaders at Los Cabos, Mexico, last week, a bright spot was Prime Minister Hun Sen’s representation of Cambodia’s ASEAN chairmanship, according to lawyer and government adviser Sok Siphana, who accompanied the Cambodian delegation. …
The Cambodian prime minister also pushed for resumption of the Doha Development Round or Doha Development Agenda (DDA), which is the current trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which commenced in November 2001 and has an objective to lower trade barriers around the world, which will help facilitate the increase of global trade.
“Our prime minister pushed for resumption of the Doha negotiation because for Cambodia it is important. We believe that international trade is a driver of growth. Cambodia being such an open economy, we depend on trade and investment. Only through trade and openness can we sustain our economic growth,” Sok Siphana said. …
Officials and experts yesterday questioned the likelihood of Cambodia and Vietnam’s proposal to hike bilateral trade by more than US$2.5 billion by 2015.
The pledge of $5 billion in total trade, made by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Tan Dung, last week, reflected a similar Sino-Cambodian trade goal made at the beginning of April. Last week’s announcement, however, would be from a lower trade base and within a shorter period of time. …
The figure proposed in Vietnam last week would be difficult to reach without an increase in competitiveness on the Vietnamese side, Cambodian Economic Association president Chan Sophal said yesterday. …
Cambodia’s main exports to Vietnam were seafood, corn, dried tobacco and other agricultural goods. Vietnam exported iron, steel, garments and plastic materials to the Kingdom.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has fiercely defended his right to grant economic land concessions after issuing a moratorium on the leases in May, pointing to a loophole in the ban which exempts ELCs that already had in principle approval.
Hun Sen attacked the Post and the Cambodia Daily in a speech yesterday for failing to understand the legalities of his May 7 moratorium when reporting that ELCs had been granted despite the order – an apparent contradiction. …
Specifically, the premier highlighted Point 4 of the order, which states that for ELCs which had already “received the official permission from the government before the issued date, it is necessary to continue to enforce in according with legal principles and procedures in effect”. …
Naly Pilorge, director of the rights group Licadho, yesterday attacked the loophole in the moratorium, which she said was “so big it swallows the ban itself” and left everyone in the dark as to just how many more ELCs were coming. …
An alleged accomplice of “secessionist” leader Bun Ratha has confessed and been granted immunity as a witness, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday, a deal he left on the table for any of the four remaining fugitives who are willing to co-operate, including Ratha.
Warrants for the five were issued after a forced eviction in Kampong Damrei commune’s Pro Ma village, in which a 14-year-old girl was shot dead by government forces.
The government has described the Kratie operation – in which roughly 1,000 police and military police evicted some 200 families – as an attempt to quell a “secessionist plot” purportedly led by Ratha.
Ratha and other villagers have repeatedly denied any such plot, saying they were simply applying for land titles. …
Thirteen Boeung Kak lake women who were sentenced to two and a half years in jail on Thursday following a lawyer-free trial that lasted just three hours will appeal their convictions, their distraught supporters said yesterday.
As the reality of the trial, which rights groups have condemned as illegal, set in, families and friends of the women gathered at the home of imprisoned representative Tep Vanny in village 22, vowing to fight for the women’s freedom. …
Human rights group Adhoc criticised over the weekend what it said was hypocrisy. …
“Whereas companies continue to abuse the Land Law and Sub-Decree No. 146 on Economic Land Concessions – razing people’s land before official licence is granted, neglecting to carry out required impact assessments and disregarding calls for compensation – citizens who exert their right to peaceful protest are met with violence and judicial harassment.”
Development firm Shukaku, which is headed by Cambodian People’s Party Senator Lao Meng Khin, was awarded Boeung Kak lake in 2007. …
U.S. fast-food chain Burger King said yesterday that no one holds the rights to open a branch of its restaurant in Cambodia, despite job advertisements appearing online featuring the company’s logo. ….
“Currently, we do not have any established franchisee in Cambodia,” Tan Ching Ee, marketing director for Burger King’s Asia-Pacific office in Singapore, said in an email.
Garment factory owner Sok Hong, who is a board member at Sokimex Group and the son of Sokimex chairman Sok Kong, said on Monday he was involved in talks to bring Burger King to Cambodia.
In online job advertisements, a company calling itself Blue Kite Food and Beverage Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Imex Pan-Pacific Group, claimed it held the rights for Burger King in Cambodia. …
Mr. Hong declined to comment on the statement from Burger King, but said that media reports of the talks to bring Burger King to the country had caused difficulties. “Now, everything is complicated,” he said. “Don’t publish anything.” …
Property prices in both in Phnom Penh and the surrounding suburbs have increased around 10 percent in the first half of 2012 as more foreign investors buy up new condominiums and banks provide more housing loans, say real estate experts.
After years of flat prices due to weak demand in the wake of the global financial crisis, the cost of both residential and commercial properties is now rising for the first time since 2009. …
