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.

-By Vu Trong Khanh, Dow Jones Newswires

Cambodia's 1st overpass

Cambodia's 1st overpass

May 27, 2009
AFP

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.

Cambodian workforce needs overhaul

May 25, 2009
AFP

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.