Railway impact reports nowhere to be seen
December 6th, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Banking & Finance, Borrowing, Business & Commercial Development, Construction, Debt Servicing, Disputed Land, Domestic Investment, Economics, Foreign Aid, Foreign Investment, Infrastructure, Land Tenure, Technical Assistance
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has not made public the last two quarterly reports on the impact of resettling families who are being evicted for a $142 million railway rehabilitation project.
The reports, which are required under an ADM loan agreement with the government, haven’t been publicly issued since April.
Though they fall under the jurisdiction of the government, according to the bank’s operational procedures, it is the ADB’s responsibility to “ensure that the borrower/client submits the following monitoring reports to ADB for review… quarterly monitoring reports for highly complex and sensitive projects.”…
Abby Seiff, p.23
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
Moody’s offers update on Kingdom’s credit outlook
December 1st, 2011, The Phnom Penh Post, Banking & Finance, Borrowing, Business & Commercial Development, Debt Servicing, Economics, Energy, Extractive Industries, Foreign Aid, Foreign Investment, Mining, Natural Gas, Oil, Technical Assistance
Improved fiscal management and preparation for a decline in foreign aid would help increase Cambodia’s credit rating, according to a quarterly credit opinion from Moody’s Investor Service, which maintained a stable outlook for the country.
Reduced exposure to crisis and stagnation in Western economies, continued foreign direct investment and development in the oil and gas sector offered the chance to up the outlook, according to the report issued on Sunday.
However, it warned of a dearth of debt transparency…
Don Weinland
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011120153072/Business/moodys-offers-update-on-kingdoms-credit-outlook.html
Historic US aid project
December 1st, 2011, The Phnom Penh Post, Foreign Aid, Social Concerns, Technical Assistance
A new USAID-funded malaria project in Myanmar will draw on prevention, treatment and containment models developed in Cambodia, and underscores the emergence of closer relations between Washington and Naypyitaw, health officials said yesterday.
The US$24 million project will expand the effort to contain drug-resistant malaria, which began on the Cambodian-Thai border late last year, to Myanmar, health officials told the Post yesterday. The project will be implemented by University Research Corp, which oversees USAID-funded projects in about 40 countries and is a partner in the malaria containment effort here, they said.
“This is our first USAID-funded project in Myanmar,” Dr Kheang Soy Ty, chief of URC’s malaria containment project in Cambodia, told the Post. The project will span five years and cover three countries – Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, he added…
Vincent MacIsaac, p.1
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011120153090/National-news/historic-us-aid-project.html
French financing: Cambodian MFI fetches $5m loan
November 24th, 2011, The Phnom Penh Post, Agriculture & Agri-business, Banking & Finance, Borrowing, Debt Servicing, Farming, Financial Services, Foreign Aid, Technical Assistance
Hattha Kaksekar Limited, one of Cambodia’s largest microfinance institutions, has received a US$5 million loan from a French development organisation in order to meet rising demand among its client farmers.
PROPARCO, which is a joint venture between the French Development Agency and public and private shareholders, and Hattha Kaksekar signed the loan agreement yesterday in Phnom Penh…
Sieam Bunthy
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011112452944/Business/french-financing-cambodian-mfi-fetches-5m-loan.html
‘Disappointed’ donors still await government meeting
November 24th, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Economics, Foreign Aid, International Relations, Technical Assistance
Government Palace, the imposing gray headquarters of the Cambodia Development Council next to Wat Phnom, should be buzzing this morning with the country’s top foreign diplomats and government officials discussing aid and reform.
Instead, with the government’s decision to indefinitely postpone this year’s Cambodian Development Cooperation Forum, the fenced-off compaound will be as quiet as on most other days.
Finance Minister Keat Chhon surprised donors with news of the delay more than three months ago, and those donors say they are still waiting for even a hint of a new date. And though many won’t adjust their aid to the country right away, some are conceding their disappointment with the silence.
Held roughly every 18 months, the forum is when Cambodia’s foreign donors pledge their aid for the coming year. In 2010, they collectively promised $1.1 billion, nearly half of what the government planned on spending that year…
Zsombor Peter, p.1
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
Group urges regional bank to press government on NGO law
November 22nd, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Banking & Finance, Foreign Aid, Social Concerns, Technical Assistance
A group of international NGOs urged the Asian Development Bank (ADB) yesterday to press the government on abandoning its plans for a law regulating the country’s non-governmental groups despite a recent pledge to drop its most controversial provision.
“The ADB should convince the Cambodian authorities to immediately withdraw the draft law,” the NGOs, which included Human Rights Watch and Freedom House, said in a joint statement addressed to ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda…
Zsombor Peter and Phorn Bopha, p.26
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
Land dispute villagers seek foreign aid
November 22nd, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Agriculture & Agri-business, Disputed Land, Economic Land Concessions, Farming, Farmland, Foreign Aid, Land Tenure, Technical Assistance
A group of about 100 villagers who have been embroiled in a long-running land dispute in Kandal province’s Kandal Stung and Takhmau districts gathered in Phnom Penh yesterday to file a petition with foreign donors seeking help in resolving the dispute.
The villagers – part of a group of 292 families – came to human rights group Adhoc’s Phnom Penh office to file a complaint, claiming that Heng Development has grabbed 450 hectares of their farmland over the past five years…
Phok Dorn and Paul Vrieze, p.24
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
Australian grant to assist railway families
November 21st, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Business & Commercial Development, Construction, Disputed Land, Economic Land Concessions, Foreign Aid, Foreign Investment, Infrastructure, Land Tenure, Technical Assistance
The Australian government is committing $1 million to help families being forced out of their homes to make way for a railway rehabilitation project it is co-funding with the government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Australian Embassy said in a statement Friday.
The embassy issued the statement to “bring some balance” to recent news stories about the $142 million project…
Zsombor Peter, p.23
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
Bank and AusAid criticized for treatment of railway evictees
November 17th, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Banking & Finance, Construction, Disputed Land, Foreign Aid, Infrastructure, Land Tenure, Technical Assistance
Bridges Across Borders Cambodia yesterday accused the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAid) of white-washing conditions at relocation sites for families being evicted by a $142 million railway rehabilitation project being funded largely with their money…
Zsombor Peter, p.24
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
State borrowing may spike
November 4th, 2011, The Phnom Penh Post, Banking & Finance, Economics, Land Tenure, Technical Assistance
Cambodia’s draft budget law for 2012 will seek to increase concessional borrowing by about 75 per cent compared to 2011, according to a copy of the draft obtained by the Post.
A lack of aid commitment may have led to the increase in proposed borrowing, experts said yesterday.
The Cambodian Development Co-operation Forum, a group of international donors led by the World Bank, indefinitely postponed its annual meeting in August after the World Bank cancelled loans due to forced evictions at Boeung Kak Lake. “This year, the aid mechanism is cancelled. Now the government feels the need to borrow more than before,” Chheng Kimlong, a business and economics lecturer at the University of Cambodia, said yesterday…
Don Weinland, p.7
www.phnompenhpost.com
Government officials at odds over debt levels
November 4th, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Banking & Finance, Economics, International Relations, Technical Assistance
Government officials are at odds over how much Cambodia’s national debt amounts to.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Cambodia’s debt stands at just $2 billion, contradicting information provided by CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap last week that the number is actually $7 billion, or 63 percent of last year’s gross domestic product.
Mr Yeap, chairman of the National Assembly’s commission on finance, retracted that figure yesterday, claiming he no longer knew what it was.
“We don’t know how much we owe in total,” Mr Yeap said, adding that he was uncertain about whether Mr Hun Sen’s claim was accurate or not, since he did not follow the speech. He said he thought Mr Hun Sen was referring to $1.8 billion in loans that is still owed to Russia and the US from the 1970s and 1980s…
Philip Heijmans and Hul Reaksmey, p.1
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
PM weighs in on China debt debate
November 3rd, 2011, The Phnom Penh Post, Banking & Finance, Economics, Technical Assistance
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday added his two cents to the ongoing debate on what Cambodia’s debt to China actually is, declaring it stands at only US$2 billion.
At a ground-breaking ceremony marking the beginning of construction on Phnom Penh’s Cambodia-China Friendship Bridge, the premier rejected estimates he claimed unspecified opposition parties had made that the debt stood at $6 billion…
VONG SOKHENG
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011110352522/National-news/pm-weighs-in-on-china-debt-debate.html
US, Cambodia to sign off on $20m in aid projects
November 2nd, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Agriculture & Agri-business, Economics, Environment & Natural Resources, Technical Assistance
The US is scheduled today to sign off on another $20 million in funding for aid projects in Cambodia, according to a US Embassy statement issued yesterday.
One project will “strengthen the ability of civil society, the private sector, and the government to address food security and climate change challenges in Cambodia,” the statement said…
Abby Seiff, p.24
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
NGOs voice concerns about draft law ahead of aid forum
October 27th, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Industry, Technical Assistance
The government’s proposed NGO draft law is a barrier to effective aid and development, civil society organizations said yesterday during a workshop in Phnom Penh focused on compiling a report on Cambodia’s climate for NGOs ahead of a global forum on aid effectiveness to be held in South Korea on November 29…
Lun Borithy, executive director of the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia (CCC), said on the sidelines of the workshop that the proposed NGO law is only one of the many factors plaguing the country’s development…
Dene-Hern Chen and Sok Sidon, p.22
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
Lakeside residents set misery to music
October 26th, 2011, The Phnom Penh Post, Industry, Land Tenure, Technical Assistance
They’ve wept, they’ve yelled and they’ve prayed as they watched excavators tear down their homes, so perhaps it’s understandable that the residents of Boeung Kak lake are now turning to song.
“Mom goes to protest, the children cry and sleep on the ground,” go the lyrics to the plaintive title track on Development Separates Families, a music CD written and composed by Boeung Kak residents facing eviction by real estate developer Shukaku Inc.
Sitting in a blue tent on the site where eight of their homes were demolished little more than a month ago, villager Tep Vanny, who sings on one of the eight tracks, said yesterday that the song is meant to express the loneliness of the children of Boeung Kak lake residents, who often have nobody to take care of them when their mothers go to protest…
MAY TITTHARA
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011102652352/National-news/lakeside-residents-set-misery-to-music.html
Cambodia’s debt to China grows to $4 billion, official says
October 26th, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Banking & Finance, Technical Assistance
Cambodian debt to China now stands at $4 billion, 35 percent of last year’s gross domestic product and more than half of the country’s total outstanding debt to foreign donors, according to a senior government official.
The amount of money Cambodia owes China has been growing steadily in recent years. The latest payment from China came last week in the form of a $500 million loan for post-flood infrastructural development.
“The European [Union] countries are having an economic crisis, and its 27 members are struggling, so we only have China,” Cheam Yeap, chairman of the National Assembly’s commission on Economics, Finance, Banking and Auditing, said on Monday.
He added that Cambodia’s total amount of outstanding debt has reached $7 billion, a figure that includes $1.8 billion in debt to Russia and the US that was accumulated in the 1970s and 1980s…
Hul Reaksmey and Philip Heijmans, p.23
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
US signs over $65m in aid, but no sign of donor meeting
October 26th, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Technical Assistance
The government and the US Embassy yesterday signed off on half the nearly $65 million the US is giving Cambodia in aid this year, more than two months after Cambodia cancelled a major meeting with its foreign donors that was scheduled for November.
Held roughly every 18 months, the Cambodia Development Cooperation Forum is the best chance donors have to discuss with Cambodia’s most senior leaders the government’s progress on development targets that both sides signed off on at the last Forum. Everything from school enrollment rates to corruption-fighting reforms gets covered…
Zsombor Peter, p.23
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)
Broken promise spurs protest
October 25th, 2011, The Phnom Penh Post, Industry, Land Tenure, Technical Assistance
Another chapter in the long-running land dispute between development firm Phanimex Company and the Borei Keila community unfolded yesterday as 70 residents once again called on the district governor and Prime Minister Hun Sen to intervene on their behalf.
At the heart of the dispute is a broken promise that has left 384 families without a home. In 2003, Phanimex told villagers being displaced by their development site that they would build 10 apartment buildings to house them on two hectares in Borei Keila. Eight years later, residents are still waiting on the final two buildings…
MOM KUNTHEAR
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011102552324/National-news/broken-promise-spurs-protest.html
Residents seek market price
October 20th, 2011, The Phnom Penh Post, Industry, Land Tenure, Technical Assistance
Representatives of 32 families living in the capital’s Chamkarmon district staged a protest yesterday in Tonle Bassac commune, pleading with Prime Minister Hun Sen to intervene on their behalf against the Thai Bun Roong company, which they say is forcing them to sell their land at below market value to make way for development.
Yesterday’s protest follows a letter that the residents, living on a parcel of land in Tonle Bassac commune known as T85, sent to Hun Sen last week. In that letter, dated October 12 and received by the Post yesterday, the villagers argue against a September Council of Ministers announcement demanding they either sell their land to the company for US$400 a square metre or resettle on company-provided lots in Dangkor district…
BUTH REAKSMEY KONGKEA
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011102052253/National-news/residents-seek-market-price.html
Foreign donors slow on giving flood aid
October 18th, 2011, The Cambodia Daily, Disasters & Disaster Management, Environment & Natural Resources, Technical Assistance
As tens of thousands of families continue to struggle with ongoing flooding, delays are still hampering the provision of overseas aid, with some donors holding back on distributing funds.
China flew in two planes, laden with supplies worth $8 million, over the weekend and the South Korean Embassy yesterday announced $200,000 in aid after Japan pledged $325,000.
But beyond that, some donors appear to have their hands tied because the government has not officially asked for help, while others are still trying to decide on how best to deliver the aid…
Alice Foster and Chhorn Chansy, p.27
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/ (Note: Infrequently Updated.)