AEON Microfinance (Cambodia) Co Ltd says it has expanded its instalment payment services into the agricultural sector, a new business type industry insiders say could be successful, but will still not be enough to strengthen one of Cambodia’s most crucial economic sectors.
“We will co-operate with agricultural equipment shops and provide... continue
Cambodian milled rice exports are gradually lessening their dependency on a single market by expanding their shipping destination in Asia, a sign insiders say is good news for the industry.
Kim Savuth, president of the Federation of Cambodian Rice Exporters, told the Post yesterday that milled rice exports to European countries, Cambodia’s traditional market, is still increasing, but its percentage share is gradually decreasing. He said the trend of exports to Asian market is on the rise. …
In the first four months of this year, Cambodia exports to Malaysia, Thailand and China, reached 40,500 tonnes, 34 per cent Cambodia’s total overseas exports, according to figures from the secretariat of the One Window Service for rice exports.
The data show that those three countries are among the top five importers that bring in rice from Cambodia, with France and Poland at numbers one and two. …
Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said yesterday that he would ask the government to cancel the land concession of a Vietnamese rubber firm in Ratanakkiri province he accused of logging and exporting wood illegally.
Mr. Chay, a candidate in July’s national election for the Cambodia National Rescue Party, wrapped up a three-day visit to Company 72’s rubber plantation in O’Yadaw district yesterday, during which he said he saw the firm’s employees logging inside thick, healthy forest. The country’s forest laws only allow concessionaires to fell forests inside their boundaries if degraded. …
Human rights groups and local communities have long accused rubber firms operating in Ratanakkiri of illegally encroaching on ethnic minority land and clearing community forests vital to the province’s minority groups. …
Officials are seeking expert firms to implement projects on so-called contract farming and the enhancement of the involvement of farmers’ organisations in paddy collecting and processing, officials said.
Contract farming is an agreement on agricultural production carried out between a farmer and buyers, which establishes conditions for the production and marketing of a farm product or products. …
Mao Thora, secretary of state for the Ministry of Commerce, said Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) provided €6 million ($7.7 million) for projects including contract farming and providing loans. …
Cambodia launched Tuesday the second phase of cassava development project under the support of China and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). …
Cambodia and China signed a Protocol on the Exports of Cambodian Cassava to Chinese Market in December 2010, under which China allowed Cambodia to export its standardized cassava chips to China.
Teng Lao said cassava is the second agricultural crop in Cambodia and plays a very important role in Cambodia’s agriculture and economic development.
He said last year, the country grew cassava crop on an area of 337,440 hectares, producing about 8 million tons of fresh cassava. “About 50 percent of fresh cassava, 40 percent of dry cassava and 10 percent of cassava powder were sold to Vietnam and Thailand, “he said.”And Vietnam and Thailand re-sell those cassava products to international markets, particularly China.” …
Setsuko Yamazaki, country director of UNDP to Cambodia, said that currently, Cambodian cassava farmers, processors and exporters are facing enormous constraints such as price distortions in neighboring countries, lack of information on price and quality criteria of importing markets and lack of access to technology. “Though cassava has become the second largest agricultural crop in term of income, employment, hectares cultivated and exports, there is very little technical assistance support provided to the sector,”she said. …
Two-way trade between Vietnam and Cambodia in the first four months of the year reached nearly US$1.3 billion, a 10 per cent rise over the same period last year.
According to the Vietnam Trade Office in Cambodia, Vietnam’s exports to Cambodia fetched over $1 billion while its imports were $253 million in the four-month period. …
Trade between Thailand and Cambodia went off in a wild divergence in the first quarter of this year.
Exports from Cambodia rose 19% to US$102 million (2.9 billion baht) year-on-year, while Thailand’s imports recorded a 4% decline to $1 billion, the Phnom Penh Post reported on Monday, citing figures from the Cambodian Commerce Ministry. …
“A lot of Cambodian agricultural products are being exported to Thailand as some barriers have been [adjusted] and that’s why we are seeing imports from Cambodia to Thailand increasing quite a lot,” Thai trade counselor Jiranun Wongmongkol told the newspaper. …
Rising exports from Cambodia to Thailand are following a similar trend overall. Cambodian exports to other countries jumped more than 20% in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the ministry. …
Vietnam’s investment in Cambodia has increased significantly in the last three years, but a mechanism to encourage and oversee investments in prioritized sectors is needed, according to diplomatic sources.
Tan Nguyen Tien, head of the economic section at the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh, said Vietnam’s investments in Cambodia quadrupled from $566 million in 41 projects in 2010 to $2.5 billion last year. …
Tien said Vietnam Airlines’ direct services between the two countries and Viettel’s telecom service in Cambodia have helped boost Vietnamese investment in that country. …
There are also four projects in the energy sector with a total investment of nearly $800 million, five in finance-banking with $250 million, one telecom project capitalized at $150 million, and a civil aviation project worth $100 million.
Vietnamese FDI in Cambodia is expected to top $4 billion by 2015, and trade between the countries to increase from $3 billion last year to $5 billion by 2015. …
This year’s weather has proven too hot for the Kingdom’s famous Kampot pepper, as yields of the spice dropped for the first time since 2008.
Some 22 tonnes of pepper were harvested this year between January and May, short of the 27 tonnes predicted for this season, and a tonne lower than last year’s yield, said Nguon Lay, director of the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association (KPPA).
This is the first drop in output, he said, since pepper growers in the region formed the KPPA in October 2008, which today has a combined pepper farmland of 41 hectares and 102,500 trees. …
Accessing low-interest loans for rice cultivation is a challenge because the industry in Cambodia is dependant upon rainfall and not irrigation and is thus more risky, experts said last week.
In a meeting on the private sector development in the rice sector, Lim Heng, vice president of the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, suggested that the government should supply more irrigation systems for better rice output.
“If we do not have enough water systems and still depend on the rainfall, the risk can be very high,” Lim Heng told participants in the meeting. “Therefore financial institutions will be hesitant to give us loans as they think it is too risky. …
Research over the past two years conducted by Srey Chanthy, an independent agricultural analyst, shows that at least $1 billion per year is needed by farmers to strengthen production. …
A year after a massive military raid here that left a 14-year old girl dead and hundreds of families evicted, there remains little sign of the original land dispute that turned this rural village into a hotbed of agitation.
But a new firm and a government-issued social land concession for other evictees in the province are creating new problems in the area.
Four months before the military raided Broma on May 16, 2012, hundreds of families had been protesting against a local rubber plantation owned by the private firm Casotim for allegedly encroaching on their farms. …
But old land disputes are giving way to new ones here, thanks to yet another agri-business firm’s plans in the area and the government’s own designs to turn nearly 19,000 hectares on the edge of the village into a social land concession for families across the province either without land or displaced by land disputes. …
[Technical officer for the provincial government’s department of land management] Mr. [Chan] Kong said the government had plans to clear 18,838 hectares of land and would eventually move 3,000 families who had been displaced by other land disputes across the province.
He rejected the families’ claims that the concession would take over any long-standing farms and said those claiming otherwise were opportunists hoping to stake out land they had never farmed. …
Contacted by phone, village chief Chea Chin said there was also more than farmland at stake. He said that hundreds of ethnic Cham families the government has sent to the village to move onto a new social land concession have already started clearing a 580-hectare government approved community forest the entire village and its 600 families rely on. …
The village chief said another 74 local families were also accusing a new rubber plantation in the area of encroaching on their farms. …
Mr. Kong…. confirmed that there was a 5,000-hectare concession in the area. …
The European union’s executive arm has responded to its parliamentarians’ concerns over rights abuses stemming from Cambodia’s economic land concessions, maintaining that, should the need arise, it “will be ready” to withdraw from its preferential trade agreements with the Kingdom.
In a joint letter to concerned members of parliament on Wednesday, European Commission member Karel De Gucht and vice president Katherine Ashton said they were monitoring the situation, and had stressed to the Cambodian government the importance of reforms, as well as the consequences of losing the no-tariff agreement, commonly known as “Everything But Arms” (EBA). …
One of the conditions of the EBA is that beneficiary countries adhere to rights declarations such as the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment, both of which concessionaires – particularly in the Kingdom’s sugar industry – have been accused of violating. …
The trade commissioner and foreign affairs representative of the European Union (E.U.) have turned down a request from 13 members of the European Parliament that they immediately investigate Cambodia’s much criticized economic land concessions, but said they were monitoring the issue closely.
In a March letter to Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht and the E.U.’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ashton, the lawmakers asked for an immediate investigation into the concessions, which they accuse of a raft of human rights abuses. They also asked that if the investigation corroborated their claims that the E.U. suspend the duty free access Cambodian exports currently enjoy to Europe under the Everything But Arms trade scheme—part of the E.U.’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).
Their request followed a resolution to the same effect passed by the entire European Parliament in October. …
The commission currently requires that human rights violations be “serious and systematic” before it launches an investigation that could strip a country of GSP benefits. In a report on Cambodia’s land concessions last year, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights to the country, Surya Subedi, said that rights violations tied to the concessions were “serious and widespread.” …
While garments make up most of the trade, the E.U. has come under particular fire for giving duty free access to Cambodian sugar due to the rights abuses alleged at a pair of Koh Kong province plantations growing the commodity. Hundreds of local families accuse the plantations of stealing their farms, sometimes violently, and offering them little to no compensation. …
Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday that he hoped land being registered to rural families as part of the government’s nationwide land-titling program would be used to cultivate rubber trees in order to help the country compete with Vietnam as the world’s third-largest rubber exporter. …
Speaking at the opening of a $26 million rubber plantation and processing factory in Stung Treng province, Mr. Hun Sen said that by utilizing some of the 2 million hectares of land that has been registered under his titling program, Cambodia could reach its target of 840,000 hectares of rubber plantations within five years. …
Presently, there are 280,000 hectares of land planted with rubber trees, 118,000 of which is inside ELCs, while another 107,600 is on small-scale farms, Mr. Hun Sen said, adding that about 1 million of the approximately 1.5 million hectares of land that has been leased to private companies as ELCs are registered as rubber plantations. …
Despite its growing rubber industry, much of Cambodia’s rubber is transported as liquid resin over the border to Vietnam to be processed, meaning Cambodia looses out on much of the value-added exports once the rubber has been processed.
The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday charged two staffers of Vietnamese rubber concessionaire Hoang Anh Ratanakkiri (CRD) with causing intentional damage for allegedly setting fire to several homes belonging to a landowner with whom they were embroiled in a land dispute, deputy prosecutor Mom Vanda said. …
Ly Sok Ngim, owner of the plantation where the buildings were set ablaze, said she had filed a complaint with police seeking $200,000 in damages from Hoang Anh Ratanakkiri, which she said was the parent company of CRD. …
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday inaugurated a rubber processing plant here, saying the factory would contribute to developing the country’s fast-growing rubber sector.
The 7 million U.S. dollar plant, invested by Cambodia’s Sopheak Nika Investment Agro-Industry Company, was built on the area of 9 hectares in Sesan district of Stung Treng province, about 455 kilometers from Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, according the company’s report. …
The report said the company received economic concessional land of 10,000 hectares from the government in March 2005 in order to grow rubber trees, and to date, the firm has invested 19 million U. S. dollars for rubber plantation. …
As of last year, the government had granted about 1.2 million hectares of economic concession land to companies for rubber plantation, the premier said, adding that so far, the country has planted rubber trees on the area of 280,350 hectares, and about 55, 000 hectares of them are old enough to be yielded.
Cambodia’s cassava exports reached 245,438 tonnes in the first quarter this year, a 47 per cent decline quarter-on-quarter, from 465,640 tonnes in the final quarter of last year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce released early this month.
While most exports went to Thailand, Vietnam and China, where processing takes place, Thailand also is a major market for Cambodian cassava. Officials in border provinces and traders said Thailand’s restriction on cassava imports early this year and informal exports that have not been recorded are the reasons for the decline.
In Sovanmony, director of the agronomy, soil and improvement of agricultural department in Battambang province, a major cassava plantation area in Cambodia, told the Post yesterday that it is estimated that 30 to 35 per cent of the total exports go to Thailand without being officially recorded. …
During the first three months, the total value of Cambodia’s cassava exports reached $11.7 million, about 30 per cent of the total export value last year. However, the figure from the Ministry of Commerce shows that the export volume is only high during the first few months of the year.
On May 13, we ran an interview with London-based NGO Global Witness accusing the Deutsche Bank and the International Finance Corporation of financing two Vietnamese rubber companies that are allegedly involved in land grabs in Cambodia and Laos. …
We asked both banks for a response and invited them on to the show to explain their positions. Both declined to be interviewed but sent these statements:
Michael West, Managing Director / Head of Communications, Asia Pacific [Deutsche Bank]:
“Deutsche Bank does not provide financing to Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group (HAGL), Dong Phu Rubber or Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG). The DWS fund shares referred to are held on behalf of investors. Deutsche Bank provides clerical trustee services to HAGL which is a listed company as it does to thousands of publicly listed companies globally.”
Hannfried von Hindenburg, Head of Communications for IFC in East Asia and the Pacific:
“IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, works with financial intermediaries, such as funds, because they can contribute to inclusive and sustainable financial markets that are essential to eradicating poverty and job creation. …
IFC will carefully study the findings of the Global Witness research and taking this research into consideration is part of our ongoing monitoring of our investments in Dragon Capital and VEIL.”
A Vietnamese rubber tycoon has rejected accusations by Global Witness, a group that campaigns on resource issues, that it was involved in a land grabbing crisis in Southeast Asia.
Doan Nguyen Duc, the chairman of Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) Group, told Vietnamese media the information provided by London-based Global Witness in its report was total fabrication. …
According to the report, the two firms have caused widespread evictions, illegal logging and food insecurity in the countries. …
It alleges the IFC invested US$14.95 million in a Vietnamese fund that holds 5 percent equity in HAGL, while Deutsche Bank owns some $4.5-million-worth of HAGL shares. Deutsche Bank is also said to have 1.2-million shares in a subsidiary company of VRG amounting to more than $3 million.
As news of the accusation spread in Vietnam, HAGL shares fall around 6 percent to VND21,400 on Tuesday.
Duc lost VND436.25 billion (US$20.83 million) on over 311 million shares, nearly half the company’s shares, he holds.
After the accusations were made public, HAGL released a statement confirming that the company’s subsidiaries invested in rubber plantations in each country but the firm “denies seizing land, illegally exploiting wood and other corruption behaviors in Laos and Cambodia.” …
In the wake of a new report from environmental rights group Global Witness rebuking the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Deutsche Bank for investing in rubber plantations accused of illegal logging and forced evictions, both institutions have denied responsibility and deflected the blame elsewhere.
But the investments targeted in the new report are not the first projects for which both the IFC and Deutsche Bank have received criticism in Cambodia.
Local NGOs filed a complaint with the IFC’s compliance ombudsman in 2009 on behalf of 79 families worried that the expansion of Sihanoukville airport was moving forward without their consultation or guarantees of compensation should they be evicted.
Since 2003, the IFC has helped finance Cambodia Airports, which is owned by French construction giant Vinci Group, for projects involving runway expansions at Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville airports.
In July, 387 families living along the outskirts of the Phnom Penh International Airport were served with eviction letters due to expansion plans to the runway. The families insist they have legal tenure to their homes, but the government disagrees and has refused their demands for compensation.
Though the evictions have yet to take place, families have been told by local authorities that the eviction will take place. It was not known yesterday if the ombudsman is monitoring the Phnom Penh airport expansion plan. …
According to Equitable Cambodia, a land rights NGO, Deutsche Bank through DWS [Vietnam Fund] was also invested in KSL—a Thai firm that owns two sugar plantations in Cambodia, which are accused of causing the eviction of hundreds of local villagers. DWS divested from KSL in 2011. …
