US bill tailors duty-free textile access to LDCS Saturday, May 30, 2009 APP (Pakistan)
Karachi—Two US Senators Dianne Feinstein, and Kit Bond have introduced a bill that would grant duty-free access (upto a limit) for textile and apparel goods, to 14 least-developed countries (LDCS) that are not currently beneficiaries under any U.S. preference program.
According to information reaching Pakistan, they are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Kiribati, Laos, Maldives, Nepal, Samoa, Solomon Islands, East Timor, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Yemen. The same benefits would be made available to Sri Lanka as well.
A large number of textile exporters and industrialists, while expressing concern over this development, have said that this move will further shrink Pakistan’s share in US textile market.
Chairman F B Area Association of Trade and Industry M Idress Gigi said that this is alarming. Pakistan is an important ally of USA in war on terror and we have been trying to get duty free access in American market. But we did not get the access and our competitors Bangladesh and Sri Lanka got it, he said.
Former chairman Towel Manufacturers Association of Pakistan S M Obaid said that the government must take up this matter with US government and get a market access for Pakistani exporters. Pakistan has sustained huge losses on account of terrorism. We are the strong ally of USA and we have a valid case for this access, he noted.
If this bill is passed it will be a disaster for our textile exports, he added.
Chairman North Karachi Association of Trade and Industry Muhammad Younus Khamisani said that the cost of Pakistani textile is already high due to high mark up and utilities rates. Duty free access to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will shunt out Pakistani textile products from USA, he observed.
The goal of the legislation is to help promote democracy while sustaining vital export industries and creating employment opportunities in LDCs.
KANDAL, Cambodia : Caritas Cambodia is seeing positive results four years after establishing its rice bank program to help poor rural families.
In Lavear Em and Kandal Steung districts in Kandal province, for instance, the program has significantly benefited impoverished households, says Chhay Meng, Caritas Cambodia's program manager in this province.
The program here is just one of the many rice bank schemes that Caritas is involved in across the country. Caritas is the Catholic Church's social service agency.
"Confronted by immense poverty and suffering, our most fundamental response has been supporting marginalized communities by sharing resources, supplying seeds for farmers, increasing their output and supplies, and helping to reduce their dependence on high interest loans," he said.
Meng said that Caritas has managed to help six communes and 13 villages in the province, directly benefiting up to 250 of the poorest families.
The good thing about the program, he said, is that although Caritas is the principle sponsor, it is the local people who are mainly responsible for the day-to-day running of the rice bank.
Farmers contribute 20 kilograms of rice to the bank on joining the scheme.
Participants wishing to borrow rice to feed their families will have to pay 20 percent interest on what they borrow. However, the interest rate goes up to 50 percent on rice seed for planting, which they pay back at harvest time. If they default on a repayment, then it can affect their ability to borrow in the future.
The scheme also allows farmers to save rice, said Meng.
Rice bank officials are elected by rice bank members in the villages and staff from Caritas Cambodia. There are three main officials per district: director, deputy-director, and cashier.
According to Yem Nuon, 54, cashier in Kandal's Stueng district, Caritas Cambodia in 2005 provided 250 kilograms of rice to poor families in her district. Since then the rice bank has grown significantly so that there is now a reserve of about three tons.
"I'm very thankful to Caritas Cambodia for assisting the poor families in our village," she said "If our crops fail, we can borrow seed from the bank. If we borrow from other sources, we have to pay double the interest (almost 100 percent)," she said.
Hem Pring, 60, director of the rice bank in the same village, said her village has 26 families already registered as members of the program and 56 other people are about to join. "The members are living better lives now," she added.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Cambodia to have first airplane taxiway next month
(Xinhua) Updated: 2009-05-29 16:46
PHNOM PENH -- Cambodia will have its first taxiway next month in Phnom Penh International Airport, a path that connects the runway to where airplanes park to increase the flight capacity of the airport, local media reported on Friday.
The US$9 million taxiway, which is 1,250 meters long by 44 meters wide, roughly the same size as the existing runway, will allow for more takeoffs and landings each day, Khek Norinda, communications and marketing manager for Societe Concessionaire des Aeroports (SCA), was quoted by English newspaper the Cambodia Daily as saying.
SCA, which is financing construction, is a French-owned company and manages Phnon Penh International Airport, as well as the airport in Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, under a contract with the government that runs until 2040.
The construction began in May of last year and will be finished in June of this year.
Currently, only 10 passenger planes can land or take off in an hour from the airfield at Phnom Penh's airport, said Sok Puth Thoeun, director of the airport's engineering department. That will jump to at least 16 planes with the planned taxiway.
"It is the first parallel taxiway for Phnom Penh International Airport," he added. The State Secretariat of Civil Aviation also has a master plan to build a parallel taxiway at Siem Reap International Airport, said Sok Puth Thoeun.
Fears for new malaria drug resistance
The drug resistance was first detected in Pailin province in western Cambodia
By Jill McGivering BBC News, Cambodia
In a small community in Western Cambodia, scientists are puzzling over why malaria parasites seem to be developing a resistance to drugs - and fearing the consequences.
Ten days ago, Chhem Bunchhin, a teacher in Battambang Province, became ill with chills, fever, headache and vomiting.
At a nearby health centre he was treated with drugs considered a "silver bullet" in the battle against falciparum malaria.
This treatment with artesunate drugs was part of a clinical study being carried out by the US Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science (AFRIMS).
In the past, artesunates have always cleared malaria parasites from the blood in two or three days. But after four days of monitored treatment, Chhem Bunchhin was still testing positive for parasites.
The anti-malarial drugs worked more slowly in Chhem Bunchhin
Dr Delia Bethell, an investigator working on the clinical trials, said he wasn't alone. Out of about 90 patients included in the study so far, roughly a third to half were still positive for malaria parasites after three days, some even after four or five days.
"It appears that the artesunate is working more slowly than previously," she said.
"It appears that the parasite probably is developing some kind of tolerance or is somehow less sensitive to the effects of the drug. But nobody knows why that might be."
These early results need to be more thoroughly investigated, she said.
The concern is that this could be the start of emerging resistance to the artemesinin family of drugs. If full-blown resistance did develop, it would be extremely dire.
"This is by far the most effective drug we have," explained Dr Bethell.
"And there are no new drugs coming through the system in the next few years."
Scientists are particularly concerned because the last two generations of anti-malarial drugs were undermined by resistance.
Dr Delia Bethell says the reason for the resistance is a mystery
And in those earlier cases, resistance also started in Western Cambodia, and in a similar way.
No-one is sure why this area seems to have become a nursery for anti-malaria drug resistance.
One factor could be the inappropriate use of drugs, related to a lack of medical supervision.
The public health system is weak. Government clinics often run out of drugs or may be closed when patients want access to them.
Instead, many patients visit private pharmacies to buy anti-malarial drugs there.
Coloured tablets
I visited one small drugs stall in Pailin's general market, sandwiched between a clothes outlet and a general grocery store.
All pharmacies are supposed to be licensed. But the stallholder told me he didn't have a licence. He'd applied for one, he said, but the paperwork had never been processed.
Many others running pharmacies, he said, were in the same position.
I watched him and his wife make up their own packets of drugs on the glass-topped counter, shaking a variety of coloured tablets into unlabelled plastic bags.
In many such private pharmacies, the customers choose what they want, deciding partly by price.
The quality of the advice they get varies enormously. If, as a result, they end up taking the wrong drugs in the wrong combinations, this too can fuel drug resistance.
The availability of many counterfeit drugs on the market only compounds the problem.
Villagers are happy to queue to receive mosquito nets
Professor Nick Day, director of the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, is also running clinical trials in the region.
He and his team have also found that artesunate-type drugs are starting to become less effective.
This resistance must be contained urgently, because its spread would be a global health disaster, he said.
Resistance to previous malaria drugs caused major loss of life in Africa, he said.
"If the same thing happens again, the spread of a resistant parasite from Asia to Africa, then that will have devastating consequences for malaria control."
In a clearing in the jungle, about one and a half hours drive from Pailin along rough dirt roads, I watched health workers distribute mosquito nets to about 200 villagers.
It's one of a series of measures being rushed through to stop the spread of resistant parasites.
If they're not contained, history may repeat itself - and the fear is that many millions of people worldwide will lose their protection against this deadly disease.
TOKYO (Reuters) – Suicide is rising in Japan as the economic crisis bites, with more than 100 people a day taking their lives in April.
"It's the end of the financial year, so I think the effect of the economy is a trigger," said Yasuyuki Shimizu, head of Lifelink, a group that campaigns to prevent suicide. In a recession, the end of the financial year tends to spark bankruptcies and layoffs.
Japan's suicide rate is already one of the highest in the developed world, with about 24 cases per 100,000 population in recent years, compared with 11 in the United States.
The April figure was up 6 percent from the same month last year, police statistics showed on Wednesday.
Japan's economy shrank by a record 4 percent in January-March, the final quarter of the business year.
"The problem is that it's seen as a matter of course that people who lose their jobs should be forced into suicide," Lifelink's Shimizu said.
"We have to create a safety net that enables the unemployed to stay alive," he added, calling on the police to provide more detailed information on suicides as a first step.
Middle-aged men are most at risk, although cases of younger people taking their own lives are on the rise. More than 30,000 Japanese have committed suicide each year for the past 11 years.
The National Police Agency began publishing monthly suicide statistics last year in an bid to support efforts to tackle the problem.
The Khmer Mekong Foods processing factory in Phnom Penh. (Photo by: Souen Say)
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 Written by Soeun Say The Phnom Penh Post
PICH Chan, general manager of Khmer Mekong Food Enterprise, walked into a supermarket in Phnom Penh in 2003, and he was dismayed.
He counted 90 different products that had been imported from neighbouring countries that could have been made in Cambodia.
"I wanted to see a Khmer product at markets," he said. "My friends and my relatives said my juice was good, so I started to think about producing juice for the market."
In late 2005, Pich Chan invested US$40,000 in a fruit-juice processing enterprise, and now four years later, his business produces juice from mangoes, pineapples, tamarind and guavas.
With eight workers, Khmer Mekong Foods is a small business only producing about 50 cases of juice a day. A case, which holds 24 bottles, is sold to retailers for $7, according to Hok Sovanna, Khmer Mekong Food's marketing manager.
But Hok Sovanna says Cambodians are starting to acquire a taste for fruit juice after initially shunning it. "Now Cambodians have started to accept its flavour with up to 80 percent natural fruit," he said.
But despite increasingly positive feedback about the product, in 2007, Khmer Mekong Food lost $60,000. Pich Chan blames the losses on his own lack of marketing expertise.
"I only have skills at producing not at selling, that's why poor marketing is our weak point" he said.
Also, as a small enterprise, Pich Chan says it has been impossible for his company to break into the international market because he cannot produce enough bottles to fill a shipping container, which is necessary to supply countries like the United Arab Emirates, Canada and the United States.
"I was sad to hear that they need one big container per month. I regret that I could not meet their demands," he said, adding many other Khmer agricultural products face the same limitations.
In the next one to two years, Pich Chan hopes to expand his company so he will be able to export his product overseas.
But the economic crisis has hit his company hard. Since late 2008, sales have dropped between 30 and 40 percent from the same period last year. Nevertheless, Pich Chan says that by continuing to improve the quality of his juices and diversifying his product line he will be able to increase Khmer Mekong Foods' market share in Cambodia.
In order for him to follow through with his expansion plan, however, Pich Chan says the company will need to borrow money. But, he says, Cambodian interest rates are too high at up to 12 percent per year.
"There are a lot of things to produce, but I don't have the capital. I need to find which bank has a low [interest] rate," he said.
Pich Chan said that he wished Cambodia had a bank with an especially low rate for small and medium-sized enterprises.
"I need a chance to borrow money to improve my business," he said.
Inside Business is a new section every Wednesday that will profile Cambodian small and medium-sized enterprises.
Cambodia, Kuwait and farmland: Petrodollars v smallholders
Apr 23rd 2009 | BATTAMBANG
From The Economist print edition
Disputes erupt over plans to invest millions in rice farming
IT SEEMED like the perfect match. Kuwait has a lot of money and needs to import food. Cambodia has a lot of fertile land and wants to attract foreign capital. So, as has been happening around the world since the food-price spike of 2007-08, the government of a poor farming country is planning to hand over vast tracts of land to a richer, oil-producing one.
In a whirlwind courtship, Cambodia and Kuwait have exchanged prime ministerial visits and initialled deals on everything from opening embassies and boosting energy co-operation to opening direct flights and holding football friendlies. Kuwait has now reportedly agreed to offer loans totalling $546m to finance a dam on the Stueng Sen river for irrigation and hydropower and to build a road to the Thai border. The Cambodian government says it has not yet decided what exactly the Kuwaitis will get in return but the speculation in Phnom Penh is that they may be offered 50,000 hectares (124,000 acres) of farmland, possibly on 99-year leases. Kuwait is not alone. Last year the prime minister of another rich Gulf statelet, Qatar, also visited Phnom Penh, with plans to invest $200m in Cambodian agriculture.
Such deals have a way of turning sour because of disputes over details. The Cambodian one seems to be conforming to type. Agreements ratified by the rubber-stamp parliament contain sweeping generalities and less detail than most people would expect when they rent an apartment. Son Chhay, an opposition MP and chairman of the National Assembly’s foreign-affairs committee when the deals were initialled, said he could not now obtain copies. But if foreigners want Cambodian rice, he says, they should buy it, not seek to control vast tracts of land.
The other problem with such deals is that they are made in national capitals and often run into opposition on the ground. Cambodia’s rice-farmers are suspicious enough because the government has a record of throwing them off their land in opaque deals involving rich cronies. Villagers in Battambang province, where the Kuwaiti road will run, say they know almost nothing about the scheme. They concede that a new road, built on what is currently a dirt track being measured by surveyors, would help them get crops to market. And according to one happy rumour, Kuwait has agreed to buy all their produce. But they are worried that their land will be confiscated—as has happened before.
The government insists the deal would be good for the country and for economic growth. Cheam Yeap, the chairman of the parliamentary economics and finance committee, says that “somehow we have to attract investors for national development.” He argues that land conflict is the fault of farmers as well as the government and that farmers have to be realistic.
This is not merely self-serving. Cambodia’s rice yields are about half those in neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam. Many people—not just the Kuwaitis—are seeking to modernise farming, which is the largest employer in Cambodia.
International donors are hoping to improve the lot of small-scale farmers by helping them take advantage of world markets by investing in productivity, food processing and transport infrastructure. Other international businessmen, including some from Israel, are seeking to bring foreign technology and capital into Cambodia’s fledgling agri-business sector.
So the question is not whether investment by Kuwait or anyone else is in Cambodia’s long-term interest. It is whether the terms of the particular deal are beneficial. Alas, it is far from clear in this case whether Cambodia’s rulers have been influenced by economic development—or by the prospect of another quick payday.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Cambodia Signs New Deal To Buy Electricity From Vietnam
05-27-09
HANOI -(Dow Jones)- Cambodia signed a new contract Tuesday to buy electricity from neighboring Vietnam, Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade said Wednesday.
Under the contract signed between the Vietnam Electricity Group and the Electricite du Cambodge, Vietnam will sell electricity to Cambodia via a 220- kilovolt line from southern Vietnam to Phnom Penh, the ministry said.
The power line has been transmitting 400,000 kilowatt-hours to Phnom Penh daily since May 8, the ministry said, adding power transmission via the line will be raised to 1 billion kilowatt-hours a year in the near future.
Vietnam has been selling electricity to Cambodia via the same power line since 2002, but only to its border province of Takeo.
The new contract signed Tuesday comes after the line was extended to Cambodia's capital city earlier this year.
PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA broke ground at its capital's busiest intersection on Wednesday for what will be the country's first road overpass.
Prime Minister Hun Sen announced the start of the project, intended to reduce Phnom Penh's increasing traffic problems, at a ceremony opening another new bridge at the intersection.
'It is will be the first overpass bridge of Cambodia,' he said at the ceremony.
Officials said construction of the 308-metre overpass would cost more than US$6 million (S$8.7 million) and would be finished within one year.
The premier said Phnom Penh had changed from 'ghost city, a city that has no people, and a shocked city, into a vivid city.'
All residents of Phnom Penh were forced into the countryside during the 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge regime, as the hardline communists enslaved the nation on collective farms.
During Wednesday's ceremony, Mr Hun Sen also called on the people to respect traffic laws, saying that doing so meant they 'respect their own lives.'
Traffic fatalities have more than doubled in Cambodia over the past five years, becoming the second-biggest killer behind HIV/AIDS.
Better roads and more vehicles have contributed heavily to this toll, but bad driving is the main cause behind most accidents, police say.
Cambodia has finally begun to emerge from decades of civil conflict, but has been hit with gridlock as well as a building boom that has begun to change radically the face of its once-sleepy capital.
PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA has an 'urgent' need to invest in education and health to further grow its economy and reduce poverty, a United Nations economist said at the launch of a report on Monday.
'Cambodia has a serious lack of qualified workers and this is something that needs urgent priority,' UN Development Programme (UNDP) economist Brooks Evans told reporters.
Mr Evans made his comments during the launch of a UNDP study on Cambodia's competitiveness in the global economy, which ranked it near the bottom among southeast Asian countries.
Cambodia also finished last in regional higher education training scores while 40 per cent of its population does not even finish primary school, Mr Evans said.
He added that lax rules and regulations have caused investors from the United States, Europe and Japan to shy away from setting up operations in the country, one of the world's poorest.
'Cambodia is potentially losing out on huge amounts of foreign direct investment,' Mr Evans said.
Cambodia enjoyed several years of double-digit economic growth until last year, but has seen sharp declines in garment exports and tourism - its two key industries - because of the global financial crisis.
Despite the recent economic expansion, under-employment, where someone's work earns only a meagre return, remains high in Cambodia.
Some 30 per cent of the country's 14 million people live on less than 50 US cents a day.
The discovery that the famous Cambodian temple complex sits in the midst of a vast settlement the size of London, which flourished until the 15th century, has astounded archaeologists - but also baffled them: why did it disappear? By Kathy Marks
(Excepted from The Independent, UK, published on Wednesday, 15 August 2007)
The huge sandstone temples of Angkor, built nearly 1,000 years ago and unearthed from the Cambodian jungle in the last century, are considered one of man's most outstanding architectural achievements. Last year more than a million tourists wandered through the ruins and watched the sun rise over the main temple's distinctive towering spires.
But, magnificent though the temple complex may be, it tells only part of the story of Angkor: a thriving metropolis, the world's first mega-city so mysteriously abandoned in the 15th century, and the former capital of the vast Khmer empire.
An international team of archaeologists has ascertained that the temple environs were just the core of a sprawling urban settlement that covered 700 square miles - a similar size to Greater London. They have spent 15 years mapping the area and putting together a picture of life in what is now established to have been the world's largest medieval city.
Angkor Wat View from the Air
The "lost city of Angkor" was painstakingly uncovered by French archaeologists who spent much of the last century rescuing it from the forest and restoring it. Not surprisingly, they concentrated their efforts on the massive temples, which were built between the ninth and 13th centuries as monuments to the power and wealth of the Khmer kings. The rest of the region remained carpeted with vegetation, with few remnants of the ancient civilisation visible to the human eye at ground level.
A French, Cambodian and Australian team used aerial photographs, satellite imagery and high-resolution ground-sensing radar, provided by Nasa, to investigate what lay beneath the green cloak. What they found was the remains of 74 temples, as well as the sites of thousands of houses, roads, embankments, canals and ponds - all believed to have been part of an extensive, interconnected residential complex that included a large system of waterways. The team has just published its findings, together with a detailed map, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US journal.
Damian Evans, an Australian archaeologist who is deputy director of the Greater Angkor Project, said yesterday: "People never really considered Angkor as being much more than a scattering of temples in the landscape. In fact, it would have been a huge and popular city, full of life."
He and his colleagues report in their paper that, "even on a conservative estimate, greater Angkor at its peak was the world's most extensive pre-industrial low-density urban complex" - far larger than the ancient Mayan cities of central America, for instance, which covered 100 square miles at most. Mr Evans, who is based at the University of Sydney's archaeological computing library, said the Khmers of 1,000 years ago appear to have lived very similar lives to modern-day Cambodians. "They lived in clusters of houses on raised mounds to keep above the floodwaters in the wet season," he added.
Angkor Wat appears from the fox
"The mounds were in clusters, and scattered through them were these small village ponds. Between the houses were rice fields. And the core of this system was the village temple, in much the same way that Buddhist temples are the core of contemporary Cambodian communities."
The Khmer people subsisted on rice agriculture, just as many Cambodians still do, and the water management system - designed to trap water coming down the hills in the north - was partly used for irrigation, it is believed. The village ponds, from 25 to 60ft long, were used for drinking and domestic purposes during the dry season, as well as for watering livestock.
Mr Evans said the newly discovered temples, were not grand, like those at the heart of Angkor. Most now consist only of a pile of brick rubble, plus the occasional sandstone doorframe or pedestal, which once bore a statue. But while they hold little interest for tourists, they are valuable archaeological finds - and there are nearly 100 others out there, the team believes.
Mr Evans said the temples not only had a religious function, but were centres of taxation, education and water control. "So they can tell us about the everyday life at Angkor," he said.
A succession of Khmer kings ruled the Angkor area from about 800 AD, producing the architectural masterpieces and sculpture now preserved as a World Heritage site. By the 13th century the civilisation was in decline, and most of Angkor was abandoned by the early 15th century, apart from Angkor Wat, the main temple, which remained a Buddhist shrine. When the lost city - swallowed by the jungle for centuries - was rediscovered, archaeologists were, understandably, absorbed by the need to rescue and conserve the dozen or so main temples and their bas-relief carvings. Few excavations were carried out outside the temple precinct.
One of the best Apsara in Angkor Wat
"No one really thought to look beyond them and into the broader landscape, to see how people actually lived," Mr Evans said.
By the 1960s it was clear that rich archaeological pickings lay beyond the walled city. A programme was put in place to investigate the wider area, but never got off the ground because of civil war, followed by the advent of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot's murderous regime. It was not until the 1990s that the security situation improved, enabling work to resume. But when the international mapping team started their project, they still needed an armed escort for protection in certain areas. And even now, Mr Evans said he never steps off marked paths, because of the risk posed by unexploded landmines.
Until now, Angkor was never looked at as an extended urban area. The city was thought to consist of the central walled precinct, covering about one square mile, where tens of thousands of people lived. "No one really considered the fact that there might be an urban fabric that stretched between and beyond the temples of Angkor," Mr Evans said.
The settlement mapped by the team existed from AD500 to AD1500, and could have supported a population of up to one million people. But some of the terrain may have been sparsely populated, particularly in outlying areas. "Now we have the map, we can quantify this residential space," Mr Evans said.
"We can start to do proper demographic studies and work out how many people were living on these mounds. But we can say now, from a preliminary point of view, that it would have had a population of several hundred thousand, at least."
The city was criss-crossed by roadways and canals, and was similar to modern cities that suffer from urban sprawl. Mr Evans said: "It had the same sort of dense core and pattern of spreading out into rural areas."
The team may also have found the key to Angkor's collapse - or, at least, confirmed an existing theory: that the city "built itself out of existence". Mr Evans said: "The water management system, in particular, had the potential to create some very serious environmental problems and radically remodel the landscape. You can see the city pushing into forested areas, stripping vegetation and re-engineering the landscape into something that was completely artificial.
"The city was certainly big enough, and the agricultural exploitation was intensive enough, to have impacted on the environment. Angkor would have suffered from the same problems as contemporary low-density cities, in terms of pressure on the infrastructure, and poor management of natural resources like water. But they had limited technology to deal with these problems and failed to, ultimately, perhaps."
The team also found evidence of embankments that had been breached, and of ad hoc repairs to bridges and dams, suggesting that the water system had become unmanageable over time. Mr Evans said over-population, deforestation, topsoil erosion and degradation, with subsequent sedimenation or flooding, could have been disastrous for medieval residents.
Excavations in the next few years will examine the theory in more detail, and try to gather more data, for instance, on sedimentation in the canals.
The radar images provided by Nasa distinguished the contours of the landscape under the surface of the earth, identifying the location of roads and canals. The radar also showed up different levels of soil moisture in the rice fields. When excavations were carried out, they proved to have been the site of a canal or temple moat. The new archaeological evidence will pose a challenge for conservationists, as the current World Heritage site covers 150 square miles, which are intensively managed and protected.
From one side of Angkor Wat
Cambodian authorities, meanwhile, are grappling with the problem of how to preserve the precious ruins within the temple precinct from increasing numbers of visitors. Just 7,600 people ventured to Angkor in 1993, when it was added to Unesco's World Heritage list. Since then, with Cambodia becoming accepted as a "safe" destination, tourism has boomed. The government is expecting three million visitors in 2010, and many of those will head to the temples. Angkor Wat is now one of south-east Asia's leading attractions.
Tourism, which brought impoverished Cambodia $1.5bn (£750m) in revenue last year, is helping the country to rebuild after its long dark period. But Soeung Kong, deputy director-general of the Aspara Authority, which oversees Angkor's upkeep, told Agence France Press recently: "The harm to the temples is unavoidable when many people walk in and out of them. We are trying to keep that harm at a minimal level."
Teruo Jinnai, Unesco's senior official in Cambodia, said: "When you have such a huge mass of tourists visiting, then we are concerned about damage to the heritage site and the temples and the monuments. Many temples are very fragile."
The main problem lies in Siem Reap, the nearby town that has mushroomed in recent years to accommodate the growing numbers of tourists. There are more than 250 guesthouses and hotels, and they have been sucking up groundwater and destabilising the earth beneath Angkor. At least one monument, the Bayon temple, famous for the serene faces carved on its 54 towers, is collapsing into the sandy ground - a development confirmed by its sinking foundations, and widening cracks between its carefully carved stones.
Thursday, 21 May 2009 Written by Rod Brazier The Phnom Penh Post
"The CPP's legitimacy depends largely on maintaining rapid improvements in the quality of life. Basic, first generation economic reforms are in place, but the high-growth trajectory of recent years will hit limits imposed by rampant corruption and cronyism. Extracting continued rapid growth will require painful choices by the Cambodian leadership that will impinge on the interests of entrenched party elites. This is where the rubber will hit the road for reform: when economic growth is crimped by cronyism."
A few final reflections on the situation in Cambodia from the Asia Foundation's outgoing country director.
THE Cambodian People's Party (CPP) has consolidated its position as the dominant political force in Cambodia. Until the global financial crisis struck, political stability had led to a dramatic increase in investor interest, generating a surge in investment and economic growth.
The CPP won a resounding victory in the July 2008 national elections, elections which were recognised by the international community as free and fair. The CPP enjoys widespread support today owing to the stability and economic growth that have occurred in recent years. Outside, it's not well understood that this government is truly very popular, despite some authoritarian tendencies.
That's because Cambodia has made remarkable progress over the past 15 years. Starting from a very low base, key indicators of human welfare, such as maternal and child mortality, have improved dramatically.
The opening of the economy in the 1990s gave initial impetus to economic growth and job creation. The main drivers of growth have been the garment sector, tourism, construction in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, and public spending.
Remittances from garment factory workers to the rural country-side have been an important source of income transfer to those areas, while the very large agricultural and fisheries sectors act as buffers against economic turmoil.
All round, a very good picture for a country that was still at war with itself little more than a decade ago.
The political consolidation by the CPP over the last several years has changed the context in which Cambodia will develop over the next few years. One-party rule has replaced fractious politics. Growth and development are top priorities.
The emphasis on economic growth holds promise for increasing prosperity for ordinary Cambodians, but possibilities for re-emergence of an open pluralistic polity are greatly reduced.
In addition, the global financial crisis threatens to undermine the anti-poverty gains of recent years and to exacerbate the nascent social tensions arising from the visible gap between rich and poor.
Therefore, the main challenges for the country over the next few years will be to sustain the current pace of economic development and reduce poverty, while addressing the worst abuses arising from a system of governance that has resisted reform in the past.
I have a few scattered observations about Cambodia, gleaned from almost three years in Phnom Penh. Many of you have been here longer than I have, so forgive me if any observations are shallow.
The international community is woefully under-informed about Cambodia
Compared to the international communities in neighbouring countries, the international community here in Phnom Penh is terribly ignorant about the political economy of Cambodia.
I hasten to add that I include myself in this category. As a group - for there are very few exceptions - we know very little about the politics that matters in Cambodia. There is, of course, the noisy, quarrelsome discourse that is carried out in the headlines between the government and the opposition. Despite the high volume and frankness of the exchanges, I don't think this is where the action is politically. To me, the internal politics of the CPP are more intriguing and far more consequential, for several reasons:
The CPP is extremely disciplined and little internal friction ever becomes apparent - at least in decipherable ways - in public. A few ripples appeared on the surface after the sudden death of Hok Lundy last November, but otherwise very little specific information about internal dissension ever becomes known outside tight circles. The workings of the CPP are especially mysterious to those of us who do not speak Khmer.
The CPP's grip on power means that mid-term change and reform is likely to emerge from within the CPP rather than through formal competition with the other parties.
Those of us who engage with different parts of the government see great variation from one ministry to the next - there are many opportunities to work cooperatively and fruitfully with the government on reform activities. Partners need to do their homework on who should be engaged beyond those listed on the government organagrams.
"I am cautiously optimistic about Cambodia. The focus ... has shifted from winning the political contest and seizing power to governing well and staying popular by delivering infrastructure and services."
The government is not hostile towards all NGOs
Relations between the CPP and NGOs - both local and international - have been occasionally thorny. Broadly, though, relations are improving, and I see two reasons for this:
The CPP is more confident as it ascends politically and so feels less vulnerable to criticism.
Reform-minded officials see value in close relations with some NGOs, both as sources of feedback on performance and as providers of expertise. We see this very vividly in our interaction with the Ministry of Interior, where the appetite for cooperation seems to be insatiable. We also see it in our work with the Ministry of Women's Affairs (MOWA) on counter-trafficking. Of course, there are dinosaurs and hold-outs.
There is a general assumption that the draft NGO Law is designed to rein in NGOs. No. NGO laws are a common feature of many countries' legal landscape.
Reading the latest draft, one can't find so much that's objectionable. One clause on political activity is problematic, and the sanctions for some types of non-compliance are rather heavy, but it is still a draft. I have begged my colleagues to view it as a draft and to take up the government's offer to consult. But perceptions are stubborn, and some letters have been written that have been counter-productive. The Asia Foundation has not signed those letters because we want to enter consultations in good faith.
Inequality and under-investment in education are growing as concerns
Cambodia is probably on a very positive and well-trodden Asian path to development. In several respects, though, it is deviating in ways that could threaten long term development prospects:
Inequality. Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs) have typically seen gini co-efficient, a numerical expression of inequality used by social scientists, narrow; it's getting wider in Cambodia. Eventual social consequences but also political and welfare concerns should be a cause for concern in this area.
Education. Investment in education is dismal. All the latest and finest academic work shows that governments can make no better single investment than in education. Dollar for dollar investment in education brings greater benefit to a country and its people than any other. I don't see Cambodia investing enough in its people's education. Certainly, we see a hunger for personal improvement and a new generation of bright and ambitious young Cambodians seems to be emerging. But not all will be able to secure international education.
External perceptions of Cambodia are sticky
It's only a little more than a decade since Battambang was captured briefly by the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia is small, and positive developments here are seldom heard in the din of the 24-hour news cycle. This is unfortunate. A vivid demonstration of this is the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report.
The EIU published two reports in March 2009. One was the regular Country Report about Cambodia. Nothing in that report was objectionable.
In fact it was a sober, sensible report that no one in this room would likely find controversial.
The report that has caused so much anger here is called Manning the Barricades, a 32-page report that mentions Cambodia once.
Manning the Barricades with global coverage that purports, among other claims, to rank countries by the risk of political instability. Some of the indicators included were: inequality, state history, trust in institutions, and corruption. These are reasonable.
The government erred badly in complaining so loudly about this report because the complaints brought prominence to a single mention of Cambodia on page 16 of the report that would otherwise have gone largely unnoticed. The rush by business groups and others to condemn the EIU was equally unhelpful and merely nourished an incorrect perception.
Sustaining rapid economic growth: not a straight shot
The CPP's legitimacy depends largely on maintaining rapid improvements in the quality of life. Basic, first generation economic reforms are in place, but the high-growth trajectory of recent years will hit limits imposed by rampant corruption and cronyism. Extracting continued rapid growth will require painful choices by the Cambodian leadership that will impinge on the interests of entrenched party elites. This is where the rubber will hit the road for reform: when economic growth is crimped by cronyism.
This problem is most dramatically illustrated in problems related to land issues. Foreign investors say that uncertainties over land are the single biggest concern, and often the reason that potential new investors walk away. It's worth noting that the prime minister himself has warned countless times about the dangers of continued land-grabbing. Yet it persists. Other similar pressures will emerge over time to test the government's commitment to market-led growth.
The government must reduce these vulnerabilities by fixing fundamental policy weaknesses. A key to improving economic governance will be to nurture and empower the small group of Western-educated technocrats within the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and scattered throughout other ministries and departments.
This group is more outward looking and reform-minded and is believed to have close ties to the pragmatic Prime Minister Hun Sen. We need to nurture and support these people, for they will face heavy challenges in the coming years that will determine the pace and trajectory of economic reform and development in Cambodia.
I have spent some time listing weaknesses and vulnerabilities. But we must also acknowledge the enormous strides that the Cambodian people have taken.
From civil war and unimaginable sorrow and misery just a generation ago, to a normal, developing country encountering the typical range of challenges that every other country in the region has faced. The good news is that others have shown it is possible to overcome these impediments.
But it is long, slow work and, in some respects, the early years are the easiest. I am cautiously optimistic about Cambodia. The focus of government has shifted from winning the political contest and seizing power to governing well and staying popular by delivering infrastructure and services.
This is a watershed transition that hasn't been noted enough. In the words of my friend His Excellency Roland Eng, who said five years ago: "We used to talk politics, now we talk policy." --------------- The Asia Foundation's Cambodia country director Rod Brazier has been in Cambodia for three years. He is leaving the Kingdom shortly to take up a position with the Australian government in Canberra. On April 24, 2009, he spoke to the American Cambodian Business Council. What follows is an excerpted version of his speech to AmCham members.
Recession means first Yubaris of 2009 fetch far less than other years
updated 9:15 a.m. PT,Fri., May 15, 2009
TOKYO - The latest victim of Japan's recession is round, sweet and famous for being shockingly expensive.
The first two Yubari melons of the season were auctioned Friday in northern Japan and fetched $5,200. Pricey? Certainly. But it's practically a steal if you consider last year's winning bid — a record 2.5 million yen, or about $26,000. In 2007 they sold for about $20,000.
It appears the world's swankiest melon is in a major deflationary slump.
Weighing about eight pounds, the premium cantaloupes were part of the season's initial harvest at Sapporo Central Wholesale Market. Every year buyers flock to the market for a shot at the prestige of winning the very first melons of the year.
The orange-fleshed melons are grown only in the city of Yubari, a small town on the northern island of Hokkaido. Valued for their perfect proportions and taste, they are typically given as gifts by Japanese during the summer.
The other melons at the first auction aren't quite as expensive, but even those tumbled in price this year. The average price Friday of 84 melons was about $400, down from $630 last year, according to the Sankei newspaper.
Image problem? Department stores and high-end retailers sell the fruit to the public for $50 to $100, though prices can run much higher depending on quality.
Yubari official Kaoru Hirano says the dramatic drop in this year's winning bid is actually good for the financially strapped city, which needs its melon industry to buck the recession.
"I think last year was highly unusual," Hirano said. "Such a high price gave the melons a bit of an image problem. Everyone began to think that they were just too expensive, and this hurt the average retailer."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This may strange for some people as usually they often talk talk about poor, rich and powerful people in Cambodia. Why not middle class?
Ravaging by civil war, Cambodia has nothing but many poor people left behind from the war. While the first ever election held in 1993, economic concept and development have been thought of by many people nationwide. How to develop this war-torn country? Is pluralistic democracy and free market economy the answers? Would monarchism bring peace and development?
Middle class party
16 years from the democratization, Cambodia is still at the bottom list of the poorest, least developed and most corrupt countries. Actually, Cambodia has made a great efforts to strengthen democracy and economic development. As it is generally agreed that it had achieved very fast and strong economic growth for the last several year, especially from 2004 to 2007. This growth has brought about new emerging group of people in the society called Middle Class. Like many other countries, middle class is the core of the society.
Further discussions about this will be available soon....
By Prou Sythan Graduate Student Graduate School of International and Business Law Int'l Graduate School of Social Sciences Yokohama National University Yokohama, Japan
