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... continue
Jarai ethnic minority villagers appeared at Ratanakkiri provincial court yesterday, demanding compensation from a Vietnamese company they say illegally cleared 30 hectares of community land in November last year. …
Chea Chanrith was granted a licence from the Ministry of Agriculture last year to clear land in Bakeo and O’Yadav districts to plant rubber trees. …
In response to the allegations, Chan Mab, a translator from Chea Chanrith, said the company had cleared the land in accordance with a map acknowledged by the forestry administration and other authorities.
“We cleared with our map. Sometimes villagers think the forest is their own, but actually it is granted to a company,” he said, adding that compensation will depend on negotiations between the community and the company supervised by authorities.
Chea Chanrith was granted 659 hectares of land to plant rubber trees and some 600 hectares have already been cleared and planted.
The Jarai community forest had been recognised since 2010 by provincial authorities, which had maps clearly delineating their claim of 481 hectares. …
The Department of Foreign Trade plans to set up a “rice trade zone” project in the East to process Cambodian rice for export to other countries.
Tikhumporn Natvaratat, deputy director-general of the department, said his organisation plans to implement the project in Chanthaburi, Trat, Sa Kaeo and Chachoengsao provinces. …
The department will also decide on the types of rice that Thailand would import from Cambodia to process for export to other countries, with paddy and brown rice among the options being considered.
“If Thailand exports the rice to the European Union, it may benefit from the privileges under the Generalised System of Preferences that the EU offers to Cambodia because the origin of the rice is Cambodia,” Mr. Tikhumporn said. …
[Mr. Tikhumporn] said Thailand might initially import 100-1,000 tonnes of rice from Cambodia for the export project. …
The British chairman of an embattled agricultural investment firm was arrested Saturday by Cambodian authorities over charges of forging documents and using them in an attempt to illegally purchase thousands of hectares of land, a court prosecutor said.
Greg Fryett, the main shareholder of Sustainable Agro Energy PLC, which is being investigated by the U.K’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) over its investments in Cambodia, was arrested at a cafe in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district, said Phan Thannarot, provincial chief prosecutor in Banteay Menachey province, where the land deals were made. …
Through International Green Energy (IGE), Sustainable Agro Energy was meant to use an estimated $11 million in Funds to invest in the cultivation of jatropha , a tree whose seeds can be used to make biodiesel, and return a healthy profit to its investors. However, not a single drop of biofuel has been produced. The SFO has said that it suspects Mr. Fryett of continuing to procure investment after it became clear that operations in Cambodia would not be profitable. …
Mr. Fryett … wrote a personal letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen outlining what he called “considerable issues” regarding his attempts to purchase more than 6,000 hectares of land owned by Mao Maly, the wife of Deputy Prime Minister Ke Kim Yan, who was previously commander in chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. …
Vietnamese enterprises are increasingly investing overseas, especially in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, it has been announced. …
Elsewhere in the region, the Viet Nam Rubber Group has invested in growing rubber plantations in Laos and Cambodia since 2007 and aims to own 100,000 hectares by 2014, following a total investment of $1 billion. To date, the group has planted 70,000 hectares of rubber.
The military-run Viettel Group is also among the pioneers investing overseas, with a portfolio of projects spanning Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, Peru, Mozambique, East Timor and Cameroon. …
An updated documentary, “Where Have All the Fish Gone?,” examines the impacts of hydroelectric dams on the Mekong River.
The Xayaburi dam, which would produce hydropower for market, has become a divisive issue among Mekong River countries. Critics say it could severely damage ecosystems on which lower countries like Cambodia and Vietnam rely. It is one of 11 dams under consideration on the lower Mekong. …
Some 60 million people live along the Mekong River, relying on it for food and agriculture. The use of the river is supposed to be supervised by the Mekong River Commission, which has representatives from regional governments. …
Residents of a village in the middle of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap “Great Lake” live surrounded by water, but don’t have enough access to clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing.
The Tonle Sap, a combined lake and river system that swells in the rainy season to form Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, has for generations supported fishing communities living in floating villages of moored houseboats.
But the silt deposited by the flow of the Mekong River, which nourishes the Tonle Sap’s abundance of fish that form a key source of food for millions of Cambodians, makes its brown, muddy waters unsuitable for daily use by households. …
During the wet season, residents can get clean water from nearby ponds and wells, but during the dry season villagers have to buy bottled water. …
It was not the hero’s welcome that greeted Mam Sonando when more than a thousand boisterous supporters cheered his release from Prey Sar prison Friday and lifted the popular radio station owner onto their shoulders for an impromptu parade.
But for the three unheralded farmers caught up in the same allegations of rebellion that saw them convicted with Mr. Sonando in October in a court case denounced as baseless and political, their much quieter release from prison was just as sweet. …
Along with fellow villagers Kan Sovann and Phorn Sroeun, Mr. [Touch] Ream was arrested in May and soon charged with taking up Mr. Sonando’s alleged call for an armed rebellion against the local authorities in rural Kratie province. …
At the appeal hearing, Mr. Ream and Mr. Sovan confessed to helping monitor a makeshift roadblock on the village outskirts but insisted they were only protesting against a rubber plantation, which many of them accused of grabbing their farmland.
Since the police raid in Broma, a handful of police have remained permanently stationed just outside the village in a newly constructed post. …
CAMBODIA needs greater diversification of its exports – especially in the agricultural sector – in order to achieve sustainable economic growth, a senior official said yesterday.
Economy and Finance Minister Keat Chhon raised the issue during the annual meeting of the Ministry of Commerce. …
Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh said that as well as garments and shoes, Cambodia exported a large of number of bicycles, produced in special economic zones. …
Ministry of Commerce figures show Cambodia’s total trade volume was $13.4 billion last year. Exports accounted for $5.5 billion of this figure.
Hun Sen announced that 1.5 mln hectares of Economic Land Concessions were granted to private companies.
1.2 mln hectares, 80 percent, of the concessions are used for rubber plantation sector. …
He said, that Cambodia still maintain[s] 9.2 mln hectares of forest land even though 1.5 mln hectares of land concessions were given. …
This action reflects an equilibrium which has to be done in order to provide jobs for citizens to reduce poverty, migration, and as well as for environmental protection and sustainability of natural resources. …
Stevia Nutra Corporation, a Canadian agro-company, said in a press release on Friday that the initial growing season of stevia, commonly known as sweetleaf, in Cambodia was successfully completed.
The first harvest of high-quality stevia leaves has now commenced and samples have been prepared for testing to determine its sweetness, a key determinant to the commercial viability of a stevia crop, the statement said.
Stevia is used as a natural low-calorie sweetener and sugar substitute, having up to 300 times the sweetness of sugar. Stevia Nutra Corp had acquired 20 hectares of prime agricultural land in Kampong Speu province, according to a company statement in June 2012, adding that it plans to expand to 2,000 hectares, if the test results are positive. …
Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a refuge for 11 globally-threatened bird species, including the Bengal Florican. They are also a vital fishing, grazing, and traditional rice farming resource for around 1.1 million people. …
The grassland area spanned 3349 km² in 1995, but by 2005 it had been reduced to just 1817 km² – a loss of 46 per cent.
Despite conservation efforts in some areas, it has continued to shrink rapidly since, with a further 19 per cent lost in four years (2005-2009) from the key remaining grassland area in the southeast of the Tonle Sap floodplain.
Factors include intensive commercial rice farming with construction of irrigation channels, which is often illegal. Some areas have also been lost to scrubland where traditional, low-intensity agricultural activity has been abandoned. …
Dotted with rice fields flanked by palm trees, Cambodia’s southeastern province of Kampong Speu is nothing short of picturesque.
But behind the idyllic exterior is an on-going struggle to turn this region’s natural beauty into a global attraction and improve the lot of poor local farmers, as the neighbouring beachside Kampot province did just three years ago.
Back in 2009, Kampot became to Cambodia what Champagne is to France – a region bestowed with the prestigious Geographical Indication (GI) status, which ensures a higher market value for specialty produce. …
Here in Kampot, farmers supplying European gourmets with what is lauded as the best pepper in the world enjoy a higher daily wage than their counterparts in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, 30 percent of whom live on less than a dollar a day. …
Sun Somnang of the export company Starling Farm and a member of both the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association (KPPA) and the Kampong Speu Palm Sugar Promotion Association (KPSA) believes there is an urgent need to publicise palm sugar and attract tourists.
Experts like Somnang and government officials seek to improve farmers’ lives in Kampong Speu, where the average gross annual income is 500 to 1,000 dollars. …
Eight members of the Prey Lang forest community network, summonsed to the Kampong Thom provincial court yesterday to answer a 2011 complaint, rejected its accusation that they had caused intentional damage by uprooting cassava plants belonging to Ol Ratha and maintained they had acted only to prevent Ratha clearing community land.
“She came to clear our community forest. and we barred her. I am worried that there are senior police officers behind this [complaint],” summonsed community representative Chheang Vuthy said, adding that a ninth summonsed activist had not appeared yesterday because he was sick. …
A delegation of 15 Indian firms is in Cambodia this week looking to increase the country’s involvement in Cambodia’s economy, particularly in the agriculture and mining sectors.
At present, Cambodia does modest trade with India, the second largest country in the world by population. But the Indian firms visiting Cambodia–after also visiting Laos and Burma-are making a bid to change that.
“Today, India’s trade with Asean is $80 billion a [year] and we do $100 million with Cambodia,” Indian Ambassador to Cambodia Dinesh Pattnaik told a seminar in Phnom Penh yesterday. …
D&D Pattnaik Group Ltd., of which Mr. Pattnaik is CEO, is already exploring for gold in Kratie province and bauxite in Mondulkiri province, Mr. Pattnaik said. …
State-owned rice miller Green Trade plans to export about 10,000 tonnes of milled rice to Libya this year, an insider has revealed.
Thon Virak, director of state-owned rice exporter Green Trade, told the Post yesterday that he had signed an export deal with a private company in Libya, adding that his company had already exported about 1,000 tonnes between January and February to the North African country. …
Milled rice can be sold at $400 a tonne to Libya, and its market demands only 15 per cent broken rice, Virak said. …
Cambodia exported 187,119 tonnes of milled rice last year, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce.
The sugar palm is a national symbol for Cambodia. Harvested by the country’s poor for centuries, no part of the palm tree goes to waste in a process that fashions the tree into a range of products. The durable and strong leaves are weaved into baskets, the sap is collected and processed into a nutritious sugar and, to this day, villagers from local communities come together to use the wood from the tree’s bark to build homes for families in need.
Given palm sugar’s usefulness, it did not take long for businessmen and agriculture experts to see the potential of the product. Following Cambodia’s accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2004, palm sugar grown in Kampong Speu province was awarded Geographic Indicator status in 2010, putting it on the shortlist of the world’s best quality goods. …
Thanks to seasonal demand, the price of rubber has increased from 2012’s year-end prices. But it was still slightly lower than at this time last year, a rubber-plantation owner said yesterday.
Mak Kimhong, president of the Cambodia Rubber Association and owner of the Chhop Rubber Plantation in Kampong Cham province, told the Post dried rubber prices had increased from about $2,700 a tonne in November and December to $3,100 a tonne this month. …
In 2012, Cambodia exported 54,000 tonnes of dried rubber, up 16.6 per cent from 46,700 tonnes in 2011.
The total value of 2012 exports, however, dropped 21.2 per cent to $158 million from $201 million in 2011, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. …
In the past four years, families in Anlong Chrey village, in Kampong Speu provinces’s Thpong district, have watched a small multipurpose dam being built at their back doors.
For village chief Soung Pao, 59, who gave up two hectares for the dam – one of three built as part of the Krang Ponley Water Resources Development Project – construction occurred in what literally used to be his backyard. …
More than fours year on, the villagers, the majority of whom are farmers, are now receiving clean, free-flowing water that has helped double their output. …
Funded by grants and loans through the Korean government’s Economic Development Cooperation Fund and built by Korean company KUMHO E&C, the $27 million Krang Ponley dams replaced outdated and unclean dams built in the Krang Ponley River basin during the Khmer Rouge era. …
“We can boost our farming productivity and boost our profits by using this water and electricity here,” [village chief Soung Pao] said. …
Exactly when that will happen is unclear. Although the 1,200 households promised electricity remained in waiting this week, Seth Soth, 48, a councillor from nearby Prambei Mom commune, said the project had been supplying tycoon Ly Yong Phat’s sugar plantation with power for the past six months. …
As examples, Laos broke ground on a new Mekong River dam that’s causing concern bordering on fury in Cambodia and Vietnam. India is enraged about a new Chinese dam going up on the Brahmaputra River. And Ethiopia’s new dam on the Nile is angering Sudan, while Egypt has threatened war. …
Perhaps the most egregious example is Laos, which broke ground on a new hydroelectric dam on the Mekong late last year – ignoring the howls of complaint from downstream. Just south in Cambodia, for example, the Mekong provides the livelihood for much of the population because of an unusual natural phenomenon.
Cambodia’s Tonle Sap River is a Mekong tributary that flows southeast from a lake of the same name. Each spring, the Mekong swells, and its current grows so strong that it forces the Tonle Sap River to reverse course, carrying tons of rich, fertile mud and millions of young fish back up to the lake. the lake floods, depositing new, rich soil on thousands of acres around its perimeter. the fish provide meals for Cambodians through the year. By potentially restricting the river’s flow, the Laotian dam threatens all of that. …
