ADB, Cambodia Announce $500 Million Three-Year Partnership Strategy [-More money into the corrupt Hun Xen regime?]

07/07/2011

The FINANCIAL

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Cambodia and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have forged a new Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for 2011-2013 which defines ADB’s strategic approach in Cambodia, in line with Government priorities.

The CPS outlines an ADB resource investment plan of around $500 million.

ADB will contribute to reducing poverty through a dual focus on inclusive economic growth and social development and equity. “The Country Partnership Strategy sets out an ambitious roadmap to reach out to Cambodia’s poor with an integrated approach to rural development,” said Peter Brimble, Senior Country Economist of ADB’s Cambodia Resident Mission.

With nearly 75% of the population engaged in agriculture, a focus on competitive farms and agribusiness enterprises, and related rural infrastructure, will create jobs and raise incomes, and improve food security. ADB will continue improving irrigation systems to promote agricultural productivity in support of the Government’s Rice Production and Export Promotion Policy.

Cambodian banks aim to ride agriculture boom

• Cambodian banks see strong deposit growth
• Agricultural investments may help loan market expand
• Foreign buyers interested, but market crowded

By Frederik Richter

PHNOM PENH, June 28 (Reuters) - Cambodian banks are hoping that a surge in agricultural investment will bring in the customers they need to take out loans and put to work the cash flooding into the frontier market's overcrowded banking system.

Cambodia, which is due to open a stock exchange this year, is attracting investment to rural areas as it seeks to move from exporting primary crops to milling rice and packaging seafood to sell abroad.

Foreign donors have vastly expanded rural road networks and firms from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and beyond are scrambling to buy land and expand rubber and rice plantations.

But while the streets of Phnom Penh are cluttered with bank branches and cash machines, banks have ignored rural areas.

Technology spreads in Kingdom’s rural areas

Nhek Kosal Vithyea speaks at an ICT workshop at NagaWorld yesterday. Photo by: Marisa Reichert

Thursday, 17 February 2011
Jeremy Mullins
The Phnom Penh Post

“So people in rural areas are using this [technology],” said Sieng Sithy, deputy director of the ministry’s Directorate of Telecommunications Policies Regulation. His name has appeared on emails leaked to The Post requesting Internet Service Providers to block certain websites.

ALTHOUGH telecommunication technology is spreading throughout Cambodia, rural areas are lagging behind the rest of the Kingdom, experts said yesterday.

“Cambodia has abundant use of mobile phones, particularly in Phnom Penh, but in rural areas there is not yet always a functioning telecommunication network,” said National ICT Communication Technology Development Authority board member Nhek Kosal Vithyea.

Speaking at a policy workshop on rural ICT development, held at Phnom Penh’s NagaWorld hotel yesterday, the former director general of Telecom Cambodia said the spread of technology was important for economic growth as well as supporting transparency and accountability.

The number of fixed-line telephones has long lagged the number of mobile phone phones in the Kingdom.

Cambodia hosts regional meeting on improving rural water services to the poor

May 24, 2010
Xinhua

Cambodia on Monday hosts a regional meeting on how to improve rural water services at scale both in policy and practices in the region.

In a statement released Monday at the opening of the three-day meeting in Phnom Penh, it said that the main aims of the meeting is to bring together regional practitioners to discuss on how to improve sustainable rural water services at scale, to debate and analyze lessons learned and to identify common principles to improve both policy and practice in the region.

Thirty senior practitioners from the sector, both from governments and non-government organizations from Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Vietnam and Timor-Leste are to discuss strategies for improving the accountability of service providers to consumers; to apply technical standards; to maximize the potential of the private sector; or to start planning and costing of the full life cycle of infrastructure.

The meeting is organized by SNVNetherlands Development Organization in collaboration with Cambodia's Ministry of Rural Development and IRC (International Red Cross).

It said that after years of working in the sector, thousands of Rupees, Dollars, Dongs, Bhats, etc. have been invested over the years in new system construction, which in many cases is not properly maintained or properly repaired and which often fails far before the design-life of systems.

The statement added recognizing the problems. SNV and IRC have carried out studies in Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam to describe the existing Service Delivery Models (SDM) of rural water supply in these countries.

And it is expected that the main output of the workshop will be the learning between the different participants on the subject of water service delivery models and practices in Asia.

And the second important output will be to reflect on entry points for change and how change processes can be facilitated in countries.

The meeting also starts with field visits of 30 senior practitioners to Cambodia's Takeo and Kandal provinces, southern parts of Phnom Penh.

Irrigation network and clean water supply are still shortage in Cambodia, and thus many Cambodian villagers dig their own water wells to get water for their daily consumption.

ADB: Women Learn to Earn in Rural Cambodia

Mar 8th, 2010
By Guy De Launey
NAM NEWS NETWORK

LEANG DEY (CAMBODIA), March 8 (NNN-ADB) — Thav Heat’s home looks idyllic. Her stilted, wooden house looks out onto verdant rice paddies. Oxen lumber past, heavily laden carts trundling behind as they make their way down the tree-lined, red dirt road.

But life is not as rosy as it may seem, Thav Heat says. “It can be very tough to feed my four children, especially in the rainy season.” As a widow, the onus is on her to make sure nobody in the family goes hungry and to put the children through school.

Women across Cambodia face a similar challenge with husbands absent because of death, divorce, or migration for work. But at new women’s development centers, women like Thav Heat are learning how to earn more money, making life in Cambodia’s countryside that much sweeter.

Ing Kantha Phavi, Cambodia minister for Women's Affairs, cuts a no-nonsense figure as she walks around her Phnom Penh office, explaining how many women in Cambodia find it hard to make the money they need.

Poor education and a lack of skills are the obvious obstacles, while obligations at home may prevent women from traveling to find work. They also face a struggle to access information that may help them set up a small business or get the training that would improve their employment prospects.

Without the contribution of female Cambodians, Ing Kantha Phavi says, the economy would be struggling. “The informal sector is very important,” says the minister. “It provides 60% of [gross domestic product] GDP and employs more than 80% of working women.”

“Women are also important in the garment sector,” Ing Kantha Phavi says. “They need to be taken seriously.”

In terms of jobs for women, there is little outside of “blue jeans and grass”; that is, the production lines at the garment factories in and around Phnom Penh or else agriculture. Domestic work in private households is one other option.

But Ing Kantha Phavi’s ministry has been working on a number of projects to create more opportunities, among them, women?s development centers.

These facilities overseen by the ministry, and supported by partners including ADB and the International Labour Organization train women in life skills and marketable skills, like entrepreneurship classes. They also offer easy access to microcredit.

Women's development centers enhance existing skills to help clients improve their livelihoods.

The opening of a women's development center in the village of Leang Dey has brought Thav Heat a new outlook on her life. At the center, she not only learned new mat-weaving skills, but also how to produce bags and purses that can be sold in the souvenir shops of Siem Reap, the town.

On this rainy weekday afternoon, the center is an atmosphere of quiet concentration. Women sew bags together, their treadle-powered machines making barely a sound. Even if there were a power cut, they would be able to carry on working. Another group measures material for bag linings. Children watch as their mothers use rulers to straighten out the straw, readying it for weaving.

“People used to spend up to 6 days making one mat?and then they would sell it for $5. Lots of labor, to make very little money," says Uch Sarom, ADB management and training advisor at the center. "Now they can make $3 or $4 dollars a day depending on how fast they work. We are teaching them marketing and design at the same time, and also giving general business training”

Her new skills mean that Thav Heat can stay close to home while earning the extra money her family needs. Even the raw material for the bags she makes, a grass known locally as ronchek, grows right on her doorstep.

“It has made a big difference,” she says. “My family's standard of living will be much better than before. And it is good to have a steady job close to home, because I have my young children and elderly mother to look after. If they need me, I can go to help immediately.”

Thav Heat hopes her daughter will be able to join in the work when she is old enough, instead of moving away to find a job. The women?s development center has made that a possibility.

If the program’s encouraging early results continue, it will have performed an important service: giving Cambodian women the tools to make a sustainable living.

Cambodia extends use of high-tech bio-digester for farmers

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Some 17,500 rural households will be equipped with eco-friendly bio-digesters, which convert agricultural waste into cooking gas, English-language daily newspaper the Phnom Penh Post said on Tuesday.

"We hope this bio-digester will benefit not only households, but the agricultural sector as a whole because it can help reduce the rate of deforestation, and the waste left over will be used for natural fertilizer," Agricultural Minister Chan Sarun was quoted as saying.

The ministry, in partnership with the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), began the National Bio-digester Program in 2005 and has installed 3,633 of planned bio-digesters so far.

A Dutch finance company has provided 2 million U.S. dollars of low-interest loans for farmers to build bio-digester plants, each of which costs 200 to 1,000 U.S. dollars.

A plant requires about 20 to 40 kilograms of animal dung daily and can supply energy for 5 to 6 hours of cooking and 12 to 15 hours of lighting every day.

Bio-digesters can last over 20 years and allow farmers to recover their costs of construction in 16 to 24 months.

Rural Poor Worse Off Than Ever, Rights Official Argue

Krapeu school located about 20 km from Angkor Wat (Photo: NUS Students' Science Club)

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
15 October 2007

Many of Cambodia's rural poor are in worse shape than they have been in the past, a human rights official said Monday.

Emerging political conflict, food and land shortages and a low standard of living continue to plague the rural population—about 80 percent of Cambodians, said Ou Vireak, director for the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

Even 10 kilometers out of Siem Reap, the gem of the country's tourism sector, most people live in abject poverty, he said, as a guest on "Hello VOA."

The Center runs a public forum that has come under recent governmental interference.

The central government has done little so far to tackle the issues facing the rural poor, despite continuous documentation by the Center, Ou Vireak said.

Ruling party officials ignore such complaints because it could cost them their position and "grip on power," he said.

Hun Sen finally admits growing poverty even though the opposition had indicated so long time ago

Hun Sen recognizes people’s growing poverty

13 June 2007
By Kesor Raniya
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

The World Bank (WB) report issued on Tuesday 22 June shows that there is a wide wealth gap between the rich and the poor in Cambodia. Up to now, people living in rural areas still remain poor, whereas those living in urban areas have become more prosperous.

Along with the publication of the WB report, Prime Minister Hun Sen also recognizes the growing poverty of people living in rural areas.

In an outline of a plan detailing 5 key priority policies his government intent to put into application for the short to medium range term, in order to share equal benefits to all the Cambodian population, Hun Sen recognizes that the growing poverty is a major cause of vulnerability in the country.

Hun Sen said: “Even though we have made remarkable and proud achievements in our past effort to reduce poverty, the Royal Government also acknowledges that the vulnerability of becoming poor again is still high for a certain vulnerable group of people, especially those living in the rural areas due to health and unpredicted reasons such as natural disasters.”

It should be noted that in the past, opposition officials often noted the growing poverty for rural people that is caused by drought, loss of natural resources such as forests etc… But their claims have always been rejected by all CPP officials.

Cambodian economy cannot close wealth gap: World Bank

13/06/2007
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The World Bank says Cambodia continues to face a wide wealth gap that is leaving rural villagers poor, despite growing prosperity in the cities and the country's strong economic performance overall.

At a release of an equity report, the Bank says the income of the richest has grown by about six-times the rate of the poorest during the last decade.

It says this has led to a rapid rise in inequality in the country which the bank believes is not structurally destabilising.

It warns, however, that land management has emerged as a particularly troubling problem, with ownership concentrated in the hands of a very small number of people.

The bank says rampant corruption and a lack of credible land records, most of which were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s, have made land disputes increasingly common in Cambodia.

Lack of adequate sanitation triggers child health concerns in Cambodia

In rural Cambodia, less than 16 per cent of the population has access to improved sanitation. (Photo: UNICEF Cambodia/2007/Rintala)

Poor sanitation contributes to high diarrhoea incidence among children in Cambodia’s Svay Rieng Province. (Photo: UNICEF Cambodia/2007/Rintala)

By Guy Degan
UNICEF Cambodia

On 7 May, UNICEF hosts the first preparatory meeting for the International Year of Sanitation in 2008, declared by the UN General Assembly to address the global sanitation crisis. Here is a report on the situation in Cambodia.

SVAY RIENG PROVINCE, Cambodia, 4 May 2007 – Rice farmer Vorn Mao is looking forward to the rainy season to flood his family's dry and dusty rice paddies. But for him and his wife Roeung, water not only provides a livelihood. It also has been the cause of some anguish.

Together they look after seven grandchildren while the parents work in the capital, Phnom Penh. During a water shortage a little over a year ago, their five-year-old granddaughter Chenda died from drinking unsafe water.

The grandparents recall how Chenda had a high fever and diarrhoea, and died overnight at the district hospital. Her mother returned from Phnom Penh too late and did not see the girl before she died.

Low coverage in rural areas

UNICEF estimates that only 16 per cent of rural Cambodians have access to adequate sanitation and 65 per cent to safe water. In urban areas the situation is much better, but some 80 per cent of Cambodians still live in the countryside.

“Water and sanitation has been identified as one of the major causes of the high diarrhoea incidence in Cambodia,” says UNICEF Cambodia Project Officer Hilda Winarta. “In particular, the sanitation situation is very poor. Cambodia has in fact been classified as one of the countries in the world with the lowest sanitation coverage in the rural areas.”

Many rural households lack basic sanitation facilities, and awareness of good hygiene practices is limited. There is often no toilet nor any soap for washing hands at home or in school. Children are more likely than adults to touch unclean surfaces and are therefore particularly vulnerable to unhealthy environments.

Improved services and hygiene

Working with local communities to improve access to safe water and sanitation is one of the cornerstones of UNICEF Cambodia's child rights programme – known as ‘Seth Koma’ in the Khmer language. Providing local commune councils with technical assistance and expertise in water and sanitation is a major part of the project.

UNICEF’s aim is twofold: to encourage communities to allocate funding towards water and sanitation services, and to improve their hygiene practices.

At Phoum Thom village a recently built well is now providing 10 families with water for drinking, cooking and washing. An information board beside the well clearly explains what good hygiene is.

“Before, there was no clean water in the commune,” says Khorn Sa Ung, a local council member. “People fetched water from different sources – sometimes from the river, sometimes from the ponds in nearby pagodas – and this water is not clean.”

Water and sanitation access

At the nearby Thlork Primary School, water from a UNICEF-funded well not only provides safe water for drinking but also keeps the school's latrines clean and hygienic. Research indicates that schools with wells and latrines help to keep more children in primary schools, particularly girls.

As a young child, student Rina Phan, now 12, suffered from diarrhoea and typhoid as a result of drinking unsafe water at home. “I think it's important to have clean water, good personal hygiene and good health,” she says.

In the past year, UNICEF has implemented its Seth Koma project in six rural provinces. By improving water and sanitation access and hygiene, the project is helping Cambodians avert the preventable deaths of thousands of young children from diarrhoea and water-borne diseases.