Australian Senate President starts official visit in Cambodia to strengthen bilateral ties

Australian Senate President Paul Calvert arrived in Phnom Penh on Wednesday, starting his official visit in Cambodia from Feb.14-21 for strengthening the cooperation and bilateral ties between the two countries , a senior official said.

During the visit, Paul Calvert is scheduled to meet with Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Senate President Chea Sim and National Assembly President Heng Samrin, Om Sarith, Secretary General of the Cambodian Senate, said on Wednesday.

"Cambodian and Australian Senates have always exchanged delegates every year for strengthening the cooperation and bilateral ties and we always have good relationship," Om Sarith told Xinhua.

Paul Calvert will also visit Siem Reap and Kompong Chhnang province, where the Australian government helps to fund for demining children's orphanage and health center projects, Om Saridth said.

Every year, Australia provides about 50 million U.S. dollars humanitarian funds to Cambodia, he added.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Cambodian prime minister lauds China, snipes at donorsWednesday 14 February 2007 12:22vote +45%

Wednesday 14 February 2007 12:22

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen lauded China and sniped at donor nations Wednesday, saying Chinese aid came with respect and no strings attached.

Speaking at the inauguration of a new road in the nation's north-east, Hun Sen appeared to be taking a swipe at donors after a tense meeting between them and the government earlier in the week. He praised China's relationship with Cambodia, saying it "respected Cambodia's independence and integrity. "

"All Cambodia asks is an equal relationship with its partners," Hun Sen said in a speech broadcast on national radio. "China is a very big country with 1. 3 billion people. If the Chinese all urinated at once, they would cause a great flood.

However, Chinese leaders do good things with their partners. " Last April China pledged 600 million dollars in aid to Cambodia during a visit by Premier Wen Jiabao - aid which the government and Chinese state media both said came with no conditions attached. That pledge almost matched the total pledged by all donor nations at the March Consultative Group meeting during which they again publicly castigated Cambodia over its human rights record and failure to pass an anti-corruption law.

Wednesday's inauguration of a Chinese-funded project came just days after similar public criticism had emanated from the quarterly meeting between donors and Cambodia. "When China gives, it doesn't say do this or that. We can do whatever we want with the money," Hun Sen said.

Donors have voiced increasing impatience over Cambodia's continued failure to put anti-corruption legislation before the National Assembly, with some even threatening to withhold funding to the heavily aid-dependent nation if it dallied on reforms much longer. dpa sl jh Read more!

US urges Cambodia to get tough on Trademarks and Copyrights

Feb 14, 2007, 11:39 GMT

Phnom Penh - The US criticized Cambodia for lagging behind neighbouring Vietnam in strengthening its laws on trademark infringements despite its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), a Cambodian lawmaker said Wednesday.

Opposition Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian said Senior Counsel of the Office of Enforcement of the US Patent and Trademark Office Peter Fowler had met with the parliamentary committee set up to oversee financial and economic matters and urged the country to toughen its laws against such infringements.

The US wants to see Cambodia ... create more laws to ensure the commercial environment and especially trademark problems, Keo Remy, deputy chief of the committee, told reporters.

Remy said he had reminded Fowler that Cambodia was a transit point and not a major production point for such infringements, but had also admitted that trademark violations did exist, especially in pirated goods such as CDs.

He said Fowler had extended an invitation for committee members to travel to Washington to attend a seminar on ways Cambodia could draft and implement tougher laws. Cambodia was granted WTO accession in 2003. Read more!

Vietnam, Cambodia sign agreement on transportation

19:25' 14/02/2007 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam and Cambodia have signed a supplementary agreement to the Agreement on Road Transportation they had previously inked.

The supplementary agreement was signed by Vietnamese Minister of Transport and Communications Ho Nghia Dung and Cambodian Minister of Public Works and Transportation Sun Chanthol during Dung's visit to Cambodia on Feb. 11-12.

The Agreement on Road Transportation covers the coastal road transportation route linking Vietnam's Mekong delta province of Kien Giang with Cambodia's Kompot Province, Sihanoukville City and Kohkong Province.

The Cambodian and Vietnamese ministers spoke highly of their cooperation over recent years, particularly in launching a road transportation service from the Moc Bai border gate in Vietnam's Tay Ninh Province to Cambodia's capital city of Phnom Penh with 40 bus trips a day.

The Cambodian side proposed increasing the number of bus trips on this route to 100-140 trips a day and asked Vietnam to help it in building transport infrastructure.

(Source: VNA) Read more!

WFP resumes programs providing food to people with TB, HIV in Cambodia

13-Feb-2007


The World Food Program has resumed its programs providing people living with HIV and tuberculosis in Cambodia with access to food after receiving aid from Spain and the U.S., the agency said on Thursday, the AP/International Herald Tribune reports (AP/International Herald Tribune, 2/8).

Thomas Keusters, country director for WFP's Cambodia office, said recently that WFP had been "forced to suspend" the programs because of funding shortages.

The programs distribute food rations to 18,000 people with TB and 70,000 people with HIV.
They also ensure that HIV-positive people and people with TB needing medicine are connected with food distribution points.

"The sick need food first before taking medicines," Haidy Ear-Dupuy -- advocacy manager at the Phnom Penh, Cambodia, office of World Vision -- said, adding, "You cannot take medication on an empty stomach.

You must maintain a balance" (Macan-Markar, Inter Press Service, 2/6). WFP in a statement on Thursday said that Spain has provided about $650,000 and that the U.S. has provided 6,100 tons of legumes, as well as 2,370 tons of vegetable oil, for a period of three years.

WFP three weeks ago announced that it needed at least $10 million to run its programs in Cambodia through July (AP/International Herald Tribune, 2/8).

Keusters said WFP welcomed the donations but added that more "urgent donations" are needed (Agence France-Presse, 2/8). HIV prevalence in Cambodia is 1.6%, the highest in Southeast Asia, according to Inter Press Service (Inter Press Service, 2/6). Read more!

Cambodia hopes Castor Oil will boost their Economic

Phnom Penh - Cambodian officials Tuesday said they were aiming for a sweet financial future fuelled by castor oil, after negotiating with a Singaporean company to establish significant castor seed plantations in central Cambodia.

Chay Sareth, governor of central Pursat Province, said his cabinet had reached agreement with Van der Horst Jatropha Oil Plantation Pty Ltd, which would provide local people with seeds and technical training before buying back the resulting crop 'at a fair price.'

How much land would be put under castor oil production was dependent on how well the plant performed in Cambodian conditions, but initial estimates indicated at least 1,000 hectares would be dedicated to the endeavour, he said.

'We are looking at this as a way to boost employment,' Sareth said. 'But we have not yet signed a final contract.'

Some analysts have predicted a continued rise in world demand for the oil as a bio-diesel fuel source.

India currently supplies more than 85 per cent of world demand, but markets are expecting a shortfall after Indian farmers began to shift to cotton production instead.

There may also be an exciting medical future ahead for 'jatropha curcas.' Various parts of the plant are currently being medically tested for a range of uses including as a treatment for diseases ranging from malaria to fevers and even tumors.

Experts say mature plants can be expected to produce nearly 2,000 litres of oil per hectare per year. Read more!

Cambodia: A US navy warship left Cambodia on Tuesday

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A U.S. navy warship left Cambodia on Tuesday after the first port call by an American military vessel in this Southeast Asian nation in more than three decades.

The USS Gary, a guided missile frigate with 200 officers and crew, received a send-off from Cambodian naval officers as it left Sihanoukville port, 185 kilometers (115 miles) southwest of the capital Phnom Penh, said Khun Borin, a Cambodian deputy naval commander.

During the vessel's four-day stay, U.S. sailors shared techniques for rescue operations with their Cambodian counterparts and the two sides had a chance to play soccer together. The Americans also conducted humanitarian activities, including repairing a local medical clinic and providing checkups for Cambodian villagers.

"The ship's visit has paved the way for the two countries' sailors to get to know each other more closely," Khun Borin said.

Cambodian and U.S. officials have hailed the visit as a sign of the improved relationship between the two countries.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military heavily bombed suspected communist guerrilla strongholds in Cambodia up until 1974.

Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed fighting Khmer Rouge forces on Koh Tang, a Cambodian island in the Gulf of Thailand, in May 1975.

The United States halted military assistance to Cambodia following a 1997 coup, in which Hun Sen grabbed full power after ousting his co-premier, Prince Norodom Ranariddh. Hun Sen remains prime minister. Read more!

UN: Cambodia Economic grow 9.5 per cent in 2006, but never realized Million Poor Cambodians no water to drink

Ankorcivilization

The UN: Cambodia Economic grew 9.5 per cent in 2006. The Economic growth was fuel by political stability in the country.

Good domestic products grew 13.4 per cent increase. The economic institute in Cambodia estimated good domestic product income worth $ 6.5 billion dollars.

With all of these good news, everybody seem very happy with economic growth and the $ 6.5 billion income. And everybody probably thought that the strive hard worth the return of this accomplishment (especially the UN). But the dark side is, how much did they know about Cambodia?, million Cambodian didn't even have fresh water to drink.

Million poor children have no access to school, the majority of them had no fresh water to drink and malnourished. All parents and children are living in a chaotic traumatized days and nights thinking about what they could get to fill their stomach for the next day. Someday they got a little bit food to eat and someday they didn't eat at all. Many of children are dying of starvation keeping their family member shrinking from generation to generation.

Pol Pot regime was a very tough one which Khmers never forget and all Killing Field Survivors (KFS) are living with psychological trauma. All of the Killing Field Survivors had never been rehabilitated. They are all living through the dust an unforgiven society (survive is harder than die). Everyday million Cambodians are begging for lives to live, but some unfortunate Khmers were not allowed to live (even a venue to be alive was not given).

Phnom Penh is the place where UN, donors and people around the world called the BOOM TOWN (Capital city), yes, it is. There are businesses, market square, government building, the rich, the Big fat government officials. But Phnom Penh is the blind fold for the World.

Billion dollars a year poured in Cambodia, hopefully 14 million Cambodians are not homeless and no beggars. But right now there are more beggars everywhere in the country and also more homeless people while more donations poured in and economic risen 9.5 per cent.

What happened was the million dollars financial and donation support for the Government keep boosting and bold strengthening corruption in the government and public level. It is Billion dollars windfall for the criminals to get bigger and fatter. And those criminals got more strength and stronger to flatten poor Villagers from their land, more people are now homeless, no food and no medication.

The UN and Donors around the world had poured billion of dollars to help poverish Cambodians; but instead, they are financing criminal activities in Cambodia without knowing that they are destroying Cambodia and the future of million children. In Cambodia today, every link and businesses, even people talking to people are money talks (bribes). If you don't have money, sorry keep going.

Phnom Penh is the very safe heaven for all level corrupted government officials and criminals. Especially the high ranking ministers, they are fat and ugly with high Villas lavished life. And each of them has two or three wives plus mistresses. Those Hells are living like no tomorrow. They are going after any thing and grabbed whatever they could. There is no law but bribes or money (law is just for putting low cast in jail).

There is nothing to stop those criminal officials from malicious act. The anti-corruption laws were no implemented because those supposed to sign the law are the perpetrators. And if they pass the law, there will be no free million dollars gift for them any more. So they just keep holding on the power as CPP monopoly political party and using all kind tactic, threats, beating, intimidation, suppression and killing.

Phnom Penh is the heaven for the riches and tourists. Phnom Penh is the smiling faces of government buildings at water front side showing delegations from around the world to see and believing that Cambodia is a better place and good future for million Cambodians. But those UN officials and delegations had never seen the outskirt of Phnom Penh and the remote towns.

All remote towns are like hell. There are no fresh water, food, hospital and people are living under the sacks, huts and trees. Every winter and rainy season, god had punished them by blowing Strong cold wind and poured rainy water on their dwellings. The body was soaked wet with water and shaky. They all got a little nap in a sitting curl up position. What is good about billion dollars donation to fight poverty? What is good about about economic growth?

Read more!

Bridge links Viet Nam, Cambodia (another new Vietcong Trail?)

Feb.12, 2007

DONG THAP — Viet Nam and Cambodia got a little closer to become Hanoi' domination last Friday. With the joined cooperation between the two countries policy that were signed stacking up ton of times, Vietnam is seeing all chew bones for the hungry Hyenas.


After a year of construction, the Dinh Ba Bridge, connecting Dong Thap Province in Viet Nam and Preyveng Province in Cambodia, officially opened. It is another Ho Chi Minh tail that keep Vietnameses flow into Cambodia non-stopped. What will future like for Cambodia?

Cambodia is a living rat inside snake' iron cage. Politically, Vietnamized administration controlling, blocking the progress in all Government level. And all level in the Ministries in Cambodia are controlling by the CPP. Corruptions are free meals sharing among the Government officials.

The bridge links people travelling through the Dinh Ba border crossing to Cambodia’s Bon Tia Chac Cray check stop across the So Ha River. The total cost of the project was VND5 billion (US$312,000) and was funded by the Vietnamese government.


The new bridge is expected to facilitate trade, tourism and cultural ties between the two countries, particularly for Viet Nam’s Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces and eastern communities in Cambodia.

Before all Vietnamese who were crossing to Cambodia being illegal, and now thousand of them can freely travelling through the border and building their dwellings inside Cambodia land. The border have been shrinking from generation to generation. It was a very big lost in the American war with Hanoi in 1970. Read more!

Singaporean company invests castor oil plantation in Cambodia

The government of Cambodia's Pursat province has sign an agreement with a Singaporean company to invest a castor oil plantation there, a government official said on Monday.

Chay Sareth, governor of Pursat province and Peter Cheng, representative of Vander Horst Jatropha oil plantation PTE Ltd. of Singapore, signed the agreement at the provincial hall on Feb. 7, Pich Horn, deputy governor of Pursat province told Xinhua by phone.

The Singaporean company will provide local people with the seeds and technique for planting Jatropha Curcas, a kind of plant which can be refined into castor oil, and they will buy it back in appropriate price, Pich Horn said.

This investment will help local people to get jobs and promote economic development of the country, he said.

Peter Cheng told the governor that his company also plans to build a factory to refine the castor oil in this province for exporting and local use, he added.

Peter Cheng said that his company, which has a big factory in Singapore, has invested to plant the Jatropha Curcas in many Asian countries, such as Indonesia, India, Burma, Laos and Vietnam, Pich Horn said.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Political stability helping Cambodia's economy: UN Cambodia

CambodiaIn Depth

The United Nations says the economy in Cambodia grew by 9.5 per cent last year, attributing growth to political stability after three decades of civil war.

The economic performance followed a record 13.4 per cent growth in Cambodia's gross domestic product in 2005. The UN says apart from booming tourism and rising garment exports, political stability after three decades of civil war, including the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule in the 1970s, helped spur Cambodia's economy.

The Economic Institute of Cambodia estimated the country's gross domestic product at $US6.5 billion dollars last year. Read more!

Hong Kong youth traditional about sex

Hong Kong (dpa) - Hong Kong has a reputation as one of Asia's raciest and most cosmopolitan cities, but when it comes to sex, its young people are surprisingly traditional, according to a survey released Monday.

Nearly 50 per cent of university and college students said they thought premarital sex was unacceptable while 30 per cent said they would be unhappy if the man or woman they married was not a virgin, according to the survey conducted by the Christian group the Hong Kong Sex Culture Society.

Asked what form of contact was appropriate for boyfriends and girlfriends before marriage, 411 of the 943 students polled said kissing. Only 27 per said they thought sex was appropriate.

Seventy per cent of the young people questioned said they believed in lifelong unions and that people should look for partners who they would remain with for life. The results demonstrated how traditional beliefs about marriage and morality still largely hold sway in the city of 6.8 million.

Because of the city's size, most college and university students in Hong Kong live at home rather than on campus. Young people usually carry on living with their parents until, and sometimes after, they marry. Read more!

Cambodia to send nearly 200 athletes to attend SEAGAMES

Cambodia will send nearly 200 athletes to compete in the Southeast Asia Games (SEAGAMES) to be held in Thailand, the Commercial Daily here on Sunday quoted sports officials as saying.

The team will comprise 189 athletes, 59 of them women, 46 coaches and 22 supervisors, they said.

All the athletes are to be rallied up for training on March 1, they said.

Mainly because of geographic and traffic convenience, Cambodia decided to dispatch a large team there, they added.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Singapore IT-service provider upbeat on China, Cambodia, Malaysia

By DPA Feb 12, 2007, 3:03 GMT

Singapore - Resolvo Systems, a Singapore information technology-service provider, is bullish about its three new operations in China, Cambodia and Malaysia, an executive said in a report published Monday.

'Revenues from our overseas operations are expected to help grow our overall revenue by some 70 per cent for fiscal year 2007,' co-founder Yap Boon Leong told The Business Times.

While declining to disclose exact figures, he said revenue last year was in the millions.

'By 2008, we expect revenue outside of Singapore to surpass that of revenue from Singapore,' Yap was quoted as saying. 'As part of our regional strategy, this year, we are going to look at the markets of Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.'

Resolvo's main areas of focus are virtual desktops, open-source infrastructure solutions, identity-management solutions and enterprise solutions.

Its operations in Cambodia also handle research and development. 'Cambodia is a highly underrated country, often overshadowed by its neighbour Vietnam,' Yap said.

He praised the drive and aptitude of the company's Cambodian staff.

Resolvo was founded in April 2000 by Yap and his partner, Wong On Yee. Read more!

Students baking cookies to aid Cambodia

By JEFFREY HAGE jeff.hage@lee.net

Steam rose from the baking pan as Jacob Wagner pulled a dozen cookies, soft and hot, from the modern kitchen at his town of Tilden home.The oven used to bake the cookies, the running water that moistened the cookie dough, and the kitchen utilities used to form the dough into round balls were a stark contrast from those that the cookies would benefit.

Jacob and his fellow fourth graders at Hillcrest Elementary School in Chippewa Falls have been joined by their parents in kitchens throughout Chippewa Falls the past three weeks baking cookies for weekly bake sales with proceeds benefiting children in Cambodia.

The project, which has turned Hillcrest into a building full of "cookie monsters," began in the classroom of teacher Beth Prusila, who called to action by her brother and sister-in-law, who traveled to Cambodia recently and saw the terrible conditions children were living in.

"They have no toilets, books, chalkboards or running water," Prusila said of the Cambodian schools. Prusila's brother felt bad about what he witnessed and called her to see if Hillcrest could help the children in Cambodia.And help, Hillcrest has.

For the past three Wednesdays, Prusila's students have been arriving at school early to sell their home baked cookies from 7:30-8:15 a.m. Combined with a bake sale during conferences one night this past week, the students have raised $1,061 through "Cookies for Cambodia." There are three more Wednesday morning cookies sales planned, with the other Hillcrest fourth grade classes stepping up to bake and sell cookies, too.

It was the students who dreamed up the "Cookies for Cambodia" idea."We were trying to think of ways to help them and we decided on the cookies," said fourth grader Elli Daniels."We thought a lot of kids would want to buy cookies," said Marissa Pearson, a fellow student.Student Kurt Schauss liked the idea."Cookies and Cambodia - they both start with Cs so they go good together," he said.

Student Riley Patrow not only helped by baking cookies and then purchasing a few dollars worth for a Wednesday school-time snack. He also added $26 of his hard-earned cash to the cookie kitty.Kaitlin Rubenzer, another fourth grader, said she's glad to be able to help out for a good cause."It's nice to help if they don't have anything over there," she said.

The fourth graders have learned about Cambodia through social studies lessons. They have seen the plight of the Cambodians first hand through photos sent to Prusila by her brother. Prusila shared with her students a video her brother filmed and Cambodia and sent along on a compact disk."They sent me photos, and we used them to make posters advertising the cookie sales," Prusila said.

Now students from every grade level have been exposed to the dire conditions of students in a far-away land. Prusila says her brother and sister-in-law have big plans for the money Hillcrest raises."They are going back to Cambodia and are going to buy chalkboards and supplies right there.

My brother is going to commission a well so they have fresh water. The learning environment and living conditions of 700 Cambodian students are sure to change for the better all because of some flour and water mixed with love - and a few chocolate chips for good measure. Read more!

Cambodia to open islands to tourists

Phnom Penh (dpa) - Cambodia's pristine islands are to be the focus of a new government push to attract developers and broaden the base of the country's growing tourism market, local media reported Sunday.

The English-language Cambodia Weekly quoted Tourism Ministry secretary of state Thon Khon as saying the 61 mostly untouched islands had been identified by the government as ideal development and investment opportunities.

The government is keen to develop its booming but narrow-based tourism industry beyond the temples of Angkor Wat in the country's north in order to create a more robust tourism economy.

"We need to link the Angkor temples to the beaches ... Although we have many tourism sites, our two biggest potential draws are the Angkor Wat temples and the beaches," the newspaper quoted Khon as saying.

The paper also quoted investment chief for the Council for the Development of Cambodia, Sourn Sothy, as saying that there were a number of bids on the table centered around Cambodian islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Sothy said the government was keen for rapid development in the area, and was demanding earnest money of 1,000 dollars per hectare from investors which would be forfeited by those who sat on land and failed to develop it within six months.

Last September the government announced it had signed an agreement to allow a Russian company to develop a coastal island into a tourist resort with an initial investment of up to 300 million dollars. The Ministry of Tourism annual report released last week recorded 1.7 million visitors to Cambodia in 2006, up by nearly 20 percent.

The country registered 1 billion dollars in tourism revenue in 2006, up from $832 million in 2005. However these figures were highly dependent on visitors to Angkor Wat, the gateway of which, Siem Reap, has an international airport.

Earlier this year Sihanoukville Airport also reopened, and the Tourism Ministry has said it is keen to attract tourists from Angkor to its stunning white sand beaches and islands in the south-west of the country, around 240 kilometers from the capital. Read more!

U.S. sailors provide medical care to villagers in landmark Cambodia visit

The sailors from a U.S. warship named USS Gary on Saturday conducted community relations events, providing medical care to villagers, during the first U.S. Navy visit to Cambodia in more than 30 years.

During their second day on land, sailors painted a clinic and fixed its rain gutter in a village near Cambodia's main port city of Sihanoukville, where their ship docked.

At a nearby Buddhist pagoda, about 200 villagers lined up to get their health checked by a team of warship doctors.

The small medical team of two primary care doctors, two dentists and their assistants are joined by local physicians and the Sihanoukville Public Health Department to provide primary health services to local villagers in the two day medical civic action event on Saturday and Sunday, according to a press release from the U.S. embassy.

The USS Gary is the first American naval vessel to make a port call in Cambodia in the past 32 years, Joseph Mussomeli, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia, said to reporters, adding that the visit symbolizes strengthening ties between Cambodia and the United States.

The USS Gary is an Oliver Hazard Perry Class guided missile frigate. This class currently consists of 51 ships making it the largest single class of warships built by a Western Nary since World War Two, the press release said.

The ship, which is 453 feet in length, has a crew of 21 officers and 203 enlisted personnel, it said.
The USS Gary is scheduled to make a ship visit to Cambodia from Feb. 9 to Feb. 13, it added.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

SK buys stake in Vietnam offshore oil field

SK Corp. said yesterday it bought a 25 percent stake in an offshore oil development project in Vietnam to better tap the fast-growing energy demand in Southeast Asia.

Korea's largest refinery took over the shares in the 15-1/05 oil field from Vietnam Oil and Gas Corp., or Petrovietnam, the Southeast Asian country's state-run oil monopoly.

The purchase is SK's second energy investment in Vietnam.

The company currently holds a 9 percent stake in the neighboring 15-1 reserve, which has secured about 300 million barrels of crude oil and over 3 trillion cubic feet of gas.

"We had a great success in 15-1 field, and we pin a high hope on the new project as well," SK CEO Shin Heon-cheol said in a signing ceremony in Hanoi.

SK also plans to set up a branch in Hanoi in a further effort to expand its overseas exploration businesses. SK is currently tapping 25 oil fields across 14 countries, having secured about 440 million barrels of oil reserves so far.

The Seoul-based oil firm estimates its crude oil development project in Brazil will start production in the second-half of 2007.

SK's oil development business turned in about 215 billion won ($228 million) in operating income last year, which accounted for nearly 20 percent of total earnings.

Industry watchers largely expect the company's revenue from exploration projects to further rise in the coming years on the back of high petroleum prices. Read more!

Germany donates 10 mln USD for Cambodia to repair rural roads

The German government has donated 7.6 million EURO (around 10 million U.S. dollars) for Cambodia to improve its rural roads' condition in the next three years, the Bayan Television said on Saturday.

The fund will help restore and repair about 2,000 kms of rural roads across the country, it quoted Yim Chaily, secretary of state of Ministry of Rural Development, as saying.

In the future, said Chaily, the quality of the rural roads is expected to match that of the national roads.

According to official statistics, Cambodia's road web now extends 35,000 kms, including 4,800 kms of national roads, 5,700 kms of provincial roads and 24,500 kms of rural roads.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Finland donates 2 mln USD for Cambodia to improve land registration

Finland has donated about 2 million U.S. dollars for Cambodia to improve its land registration, officials told Xinhua on Saturday.

Ministry of Urbanization and Construction will use the fund to adopt modern information technology, strengthen public awareness and increase community participation in the sector of land registration, said Mean Chanvanny, chief of Cabinet of Ministers.

In addition, Im Chhun Lim, Minister of Urbanization and Construction, expressed appreciation to Finland, saying that it has helped Cambodia handle the land registration, a key work closely connected with the living conditions of the people.

From 2002 to 2007, Finland altogether provided about 3.5 million U.S. dollars for Cambodia to improve its land registration, he added.

Source: Xinhua Read more!