Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism on Wednesday finalized its 5-year strategic plan to attract at least 1.3 million Chinese visitors by 2018.
Speaking at a seminar on Cambodia tourism marketing strategy targeting China, So Visothy, director of the Tourism Ministry’s Marketing and Promotion Department, said that currently China is the third largest tourist arrival group to Cambodia.
The country greeted 333,890 Chinese visitors in 2012, up 35 percent year-on-year, and during the first four months of this year, some 174,150 Chinese visited Cambodia, up 55 percent compared with the same period last year. …
Tourism is one of the major sectors supporting Cambodian economy. Last year, the country received 3.58 million foreign tourists, up 24 percent year-on-year, and generated total revenue of about 2.2 billion U.S. dollars, or 12 percent of the GDP, said the ministry of tourism. …
Since 2007, the NGO Pact has been working with the government to turn 68,000 hectares of forest in Oddar Meanchey province into a moneymaking venture for the state just by keeping trees in the area standing.
As part of the plan, Pact brought on board a U.S. brokerage, Terra Global Capital, to help sell the forest’s carbon credits to environmentally conscious firms in the West. Together, after years of preparatory work, the pair were finally closing in on approval of the project and a few months ago had even lined up two private buyers ready to spend nearly $1 million on the first batch of carbon credits from Oddar Meanchey.
But when the deciding moment came last month to put pen to paper, there was a glitch.
According to Pact, when the May 20 deadline they had set for the government to sign off on the carbon credit deal came and went without a signature, the two buyers Terra Global and Pact had spent so long nurturing simply walked away.
The loss of the carbon credit deal means more for Cambodia than simply missing out on the $1 million.
Pact country director Sarah Sitts said the failure to sell the carbon credits could hurt the country’s chances of attracting other buyers to a project that hopes to ultimately generate tens of millions of dollars over the next 30 years by protecting what is left of the country’s forests. …
Ms. Sitts said the two firms involved in the aborted deal had been waiting for at least a month and a half for the forestry administration to accept their offer to pay a combined $911,000 for the credits, but pulled out when the May 20 deadline they had set passed without a commitment from the government. …
The carbon credits up for sale would have come from a network of 13 government-recognized community forests in Oddar Meanchey province covering a combined 68,000 hectares.
As part of a U.N.-backed and funded initiative called REDD, for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, the project aims to convince private international companies wanting to offset their carbon emissions to pay Cambodia for every ton of carbon those forests keep locked up in their trees. …
The government handing out land to agri-business firms in the area poses other risks. While there are no economic land concessions yet in Oddar Meanchey’s 13 community forests, Mr. [Sa] Thlai [who heads the 13 community forest groups that patrol the project area] said he is concerned about a sugar cane plantation owned by Angkor Sugar that currently skirts the project area’s borders. He said the firm has cleared most of the trees on its concession since moving in five years ago but planted little sugarcane in their place.
Angkor Sugar is also one of three subsidiaries of the Thai firm Mitr Pohl operating plantations in the province. …
A 2010 study in Koh Kong province by the U.S.-based Center for Clean Air Policy calculated that carbon credits would have to sell for more than $15 per ton to compete with the likely revenue from growing sugarcane on the land instead, even more if it were used to harvest rubber.
The going price for carbon credits these days, at roughly $7 per ton, does not come close to the profit made possible from felling the forest.
A land titling campaign in Cambodia launched and financed by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s lacks transparency and could leave thousands of people landless, a human rights group said Wednesday, urging the country’s donors to push for reform of the program.
The campaign, which employs volunteer youth to measure land for villagers, has little oversight and is largely benefiting the rich and well-connected, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement.
Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW, praised Hun Sen for his recent suspension of the campaign until after Cambodia’s July 28 national elections, but said that independent organizations must be allowed to monitor the process and intervene on behalf of families negatively affected by the program. …
HRW said that according to research it conducted into the efficacy of the campaign over a two-month period in Koh Kong and Kampong Speu provinces, residents in some areas reported positive experiences working with the “Samdech Techo Youth” units—who take their name from Hun Sen’s honorific title—saying they had assisted them in obtaining ownership documentation for land they had long occupied.
But in other locations, such as Kampong Speu’s Phnom Sruoch district, villagers run off land their families had farmed since the 1940s said that youth unit leaders had threatened to “throw you in irons and send you to prison” when they tried to plead their cases. …
HRW called on donor countries, the World Bank, and the United Nations to insist that the land titling process be “thoroughly revised to ensure adequate public consultation, a transparent process open to independent monitoring and evaluation, adequate compensation for those who are denied title in favor of concession holders or others, and an independent complaint process.”
The foreign ministers of Thailand and Cambodia signed a memorandum of understanding in Phnom Penh yesterday reconfirming their commitment to developing their joint border with new economic zones, checkpoints and a 1,800-MW power plant. …
“We have agreed to create four international checkpoints to improve trade along the border in Preah Vihear, Battambang, Pursat and Oddar Meanchey provinces,” Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said at the signing ceremony.
He said they had also agreed to set up new special economic zones near the border in the province of Banteay Meanchey and Koh Kong and to continue studying the potential of a 1,8000 MW coal fired power plant in Koh Kong that would send electricity back to Thailand. …
Mr. Namong’s Thai counterpart, Surapong Tovichahchaikul, said they had also agreed to improve road and rail connections between the two countries and recommitted to keeping the border peaceful. …
Oddar Meanchey province deputy governor Lon An yesterday confirmed CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat’s involvement in a trio of sugar cane plantations that rights groups took to the National Human rights Commission of Thailand last week, but denied their allegations of rights abuses. …
The deputy governor insisted that all the families received new land equal to what they were losing and denied that any homes were ever burned or razed. …
Asia’s largest sugar company has been accused of torching hundreds of homes, orchestrating the imprisonment of a pregnant activist and using security forces to beat villagers – among a raft of other grave human rights abuses – by communities in Oddar Meanchey province.
The allegations levelled against Thai conglomerate Mitr Phol Sugar Corporation in a complaint to the Thai national human rights commission include further accusations that the firm had confiscated land, killed livestock, looted crops and employed child labour.
Local rights groups Licadho and Equitable Cambodia filed the complaint, obtained by the Post yesterday, on May 21 on behalf of 600 villagers in Oddar Meanchey’s Samrong and Chongkal districts.
It says the actions of the firm, which holds almost 20,000 hectares of economic land concessions in those districts and whose shell companies are allegedly linked to ruling-party senator Ly Yong Phat, had led to “extreme food insecurity and impoverishment [for] affected households”. …
Five Koh Kong families embroiled in an ongoing land dispute with Heng Huy Agriculture Company were accompanied by more than 50 villagers yesterday as they went to court to clarify why they are asking for contracts signed with the company to be annulled. …
Pok Yon, a community representative, said the villagers had lived on the land since 1979 and have had a dispute with the company since 2009, with the five families signing contracts late last year to subdivide their land for company use. …
In an effort to boost trade activity between Thailand and Cambodia, both countries will discuss plans for two special economic zones along the Thai-Cambodian border next month, according to the secretary of state at the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday.
“It will provide us a lot of benefit,” Long Visalo said after the meeting between the Minster of Foreign Affairs, other relevant ministers and governors from provinces along the Cambodian-Thai border. …
Thailand will propose to Cambodia that they jointly develop border areas and transport links between the two countries, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said yesterday….
Thailand will also develop roads, railways and border checkpoints, he said. Proposed road projects include improving roads Nos.5, 6 and 48 linking Koh Kong and Saair Ampur. …
Thailand will also develop roads, railways and border checkpoints, he said. Proposed road projects include improving roads Nos.5, 6 and 48 linking Koh Kong and Saair Ampur.
Rail projects include a six-kilometre Aranyaprathet-Ban Klong Luek line in Sa Kaeo province and a 48km Poipet-Sisophon line in Cambodia.
The border checkpoints at Ban Nong Aien in Sa Kaeo and the Ban Strung Bot in Banteay Meanjeay will be upgraded.
Mr Surapong said Thailand will consider selling more electricity to Cambodia, up from 80 megawatts to 120 megawatts a year, and will help develop a hydro-power plant in Strung Num and a coal-fired power plant in Koh Kong.
An illegal logger in Cambodia has dropped an address book during a bust, leaving behind details of corrupt government officials and spying rangers.
The man fled after being intercepted by police over an illegal haul of rare rosewood in Koh Kong province earlier this month. ….
“We were able to confiscate the wood, and we stumbled upon this treasure trove of names and pay off amounts of all the people he had been dealing with, including some government officials,” she said. ….
Several rangers working with Wildlife Alliance have been identified as spies for the loggers and are currently under 24-hour surveillance after being questioned.
Several days of rain have finally brought relief to hundreds of families in Koh Kong province’s Khemara Phoumint City who had been without water for two weeks because the reservoir that provides their supply dried up during hot season. …
LYP Group, a company owned by Ly Yong Yong Phat, channels water to 4,000 families in Khemara Phoumint City from the Cham Yeam reservoir in Mondol Seima district and [provincial director of the Department of Industry Mines and Energy] Mr. [Pitch] Si Yun said that about 20 percent of those families had been affected since early May by water shortages.
Mr. Si Yun said that both his department and LYP group had studied ways to solve the area’s water-shortage problem and had already identified a new reservoir site at Ta Phorn waterfall located nearby that could store between 5,000 and 7,000 cubic meters of water. …
Mr. Si Yun said construction was scheduled to begin later this year and would take around two years to complete. …
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. …
Hundreds of families in Koh Kong province’s Khmara Phoumint City are suffering from a shortage of water, which is provided by a reservoir that dried up during the hot season, local officials said yesterday.
Smach Meanchey and Dang Tong communes typically receive water from the Cham Yeam reservoir in Mondol Seima district, said Pich Si Yun, provincial director of the department of industry mines and energy.
The water is channelled from the reservoir, located about 7 km from the city, to the two communes by LTP Group, a company owned by CCP Senator Ly Yong Phat, he said. …
Dang Tong commune chief Lim Dy said the problem was more serious than the provincial authorities reported. All the families in his commune-more than 2,000-have been affected by the shortage for the past two weeks, he said. …
Koh Kong province’s mangrove forests have changed from being a source of charcoal to serving tourists who help to protect their biodiversity. The forests have now become a popular destination for Cambodian tourists. …
Yem Yan, Peam Krasorb commune chief in Koh Kong, said gradually visitors have been coming from different provinces in the country.
He said Peam Krasorb community earned about 140 million riel ($35,000) from selling tickets to 40,000 visitors – Cambodian visitors pay 3,000 riel and foreigners pay 5,000 riel per day – per year in the last few years. …
Yem Yan said mangrove forests were being destroyed in the 1990s because villagers made charcoal, but since the year 2000 there has been strict protection of mangrove forests. …
The first three-day Koh Kong Investment and Trade Fair 2013 kicked off on Saturday, promoting trade and investment in the southern provinces of Cambodia with neighbours Thailand and Vietnam. …
“The [fair] is aimed at promoting trade and development in Koh Kong province and other border provinces in the southern region of the country, which is to further enlarge trade and the economy between Cambodian provinces, and with the provinces of Thailand and Vietnam that are boardering Cambodia in this southern region,” said Cham Prasidh, Cambodia’s Minister of Commerce. …
The government on Friday awarded CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat a $92.21 million contract to install power lines in Cambodia’s eastern provinces, the Council of Ministers said in a statement.
During the weekly Cabinet meeting, senior officials including Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on the deal to extend the national grid by connecting Phnom Penh with Kompong Cham, Kratie, Stung Treng, Ratanakkiri and Mondolkiri provinces. …
Mark Moorstein knew little about Cambodia before he got involved in a lawsuit on behalf of land owners there. But as it’s turning out, the suit could end up affecting most every country in Asia.
Moorstein is a land-use lawyer in Northern Virginia who, like many lawyers, was looking for some pro-bono, charitable work to do on the side. …
Across Asia, almost every country is guilty of baldly seizing its citizens’ land without significant compensation and then selling it to corporations or developers, leaving the owners homeless and often destitute. …
Finally in 2001, Cambodia enacted a Land Law intended to curb these seizures. But like so many measures passed to mollify the Western donors who keep the government afloat, the government immediately began ignoring its own law. Now, as one major Cambodian human rights organization put it: “In Phnom Penh and the 12 provinces” around it “land-grabbing has affected an estimated 400,000 Cambodians since 2003, helping to create a sizable underclass of landless villagers with no means for self-sustenance.” …
It turned out that the land he [Mark Moorstein] focused on — two plots of about 25,000 acres each — is used to grow sugar cane, primarily. A wealthy and powerful Cambodian senator took possession of it after evicting residents from about 200 individual plots. Many of the evictees held identification cards the United Nations had given them when it set up a protectorate in Cambodia 20 years ago. Under the Land Law, that meant they held legal title to the property. …
Once the suit was filed, Tate & Lyle seemed to panic. Very quickly, it sold its entire sugar unit to American Sugar Refining, better known here in the United States for its name-brand product: Domino Sugar. That company is now the defendant, and when contacted for comment, the company declined.
But last Thursday, the company did file its response to the suit. It said Tate & Lyle had no knowledge of any prior ownership of the land in question. The villagers had no claim to the sugar cane grown on the land, even if they did previously own it, because they had not paid for the seeds or production costs. And finally, the defendants claimed, “The English court cannot adjudicate or call into question” matters of Cambodian law dealing with land concessions.
Nonetheless, the British court had already accepted the suit. The case is moving forward, and that all by itself is already encouraging many people. …
The small but sleek Angkor Car can easily navigate the narrow streets of Cambodia, while with an electric engine saves on expensive fuel costs. It may cost $10,000 per vehicle, a bit steep for most local people, but the vehicle is a welcome testimony to Cambodian ingenuity.
And it is well timed as well, as Cambodia’s automotive sector is just beginning to make some noise. The number of cars that are registered with the government more than doubled since 2006 to 231,352 at the end of last year, according to data from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport.
The tendency to buy high-end automobiles is also on the rise, growing 27% in 2011 compared to the year before, according to the World Bank. …
In fact, a number of distributors recorded growth in 2012 as Toyota Cambodia reportedly sold 800 units, up from 500 in 2011, while Ford recorded 15% growth in sales. …
Cambodia charges some of the highest import taxes on vehicles in the world. Whether you are a car distributor or somebody looking to ship in a vehicle from home, you will be will have to pay a 45% excise tax, a 35% import duty and a 10% added value tax on the value of any vehicle brought into the country. Those taxes compounded with logistics fees and other “informal costs” can bring the total cost of importing a car well over its original cost, making it almost impossible for some distributors of imported cars to turn a profit. …
Where the auto market has many dark corners, there is some light as high wage costs abroad have resulted in some manufactures establishing assembly plants in the country. Hyundai opened its $62-million assembly plant in Koh Kong’s special economic zone in January 2011, while Ford opened an assembly plant in Preah Sihanouk province last year able to produce 6,000 vehicles a year.
“When you look at China, the wages are far higher than they once were and if you look at neighbouring Thailand, the minimum wage is also higher, so in Cambodia, you are saving on wages between 75% and 80%, and those savings will go right into your bottom line,” Sharaf said.
British sugar firm Tate & Lyle has denied knowing of the alleged abuses at two Cambodian plantations accused of illegally driving hundreds of families off their farms and says that the families have no right to ask the company for compensation, according to the firm’s official defense filed last week with the U.K.’s High Court of Justice.
Two hundred of those families, some of whom say they were shot and beaten when the plantation owners started evicting them in 2006, are suing Tate & Lyle for millions of dollars in compensation. In their claim, they say the land in Koh Kong province still belongs to them and that Tate & Lyle owes them some of the roughly $32 million worth of sugar it has since bought off that land and shipped home.
But Tate & Lyle, in its defense, refuses to admit that the families owned the land or that they ever lived or farmed there. It even refuses to admit that any of the sugar grown on the disputed 1,364 hectares since exports happened in 2010- through a deal it made with the Thai majority owners of the plantations-ever made it to the U.K.
An even if the families did own the land, Tate & Lyle argues, they gave up any right to compensation because they never paid the Thai plantation owners for the work they put into growing the sugar and because the act of processing the sugar cane had turned it into a different “species”. …
The French Development Agency (AFD) said yesterday it is discussing an approximately 50 million euro ($65 million) loan to extend electricity transmission lines, and said it plans to provide more loans for vocational training in the Kingdom.
“We are discussing [the] loan . . . that we could give to EDC [Electricité du Cambodge] for the finance of a 200-kilometres transmission line (high tension) and a 200-kilometres line of medium tension [22KW] in the provinces of Koh Kong (between Koh Kong and Srea Ambel) and between Kampong Cham and Kratie,” Julien Darpoux, program officer for Cambodia and Laos from the French Development Agency, told the Post yesterday. …
Now only 24 to 25 per cent of households in the country have access to electricity, AFD Director André Pouillès-Duplaix said during a press conference. “We have a lot of work to do in this sector.” …
