Angkor Wat, Cambodia – an emerging tourist destination

A group of nine of us visited Angkor Thom, where towering twisting trees enveloped all the temples, and where Angelina Jolie filmed “Laura Croft, Tomb Raider.”

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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Cambodia, an ancient society with an embattled past, is now emerging into the 21st century with a coalition government that is striving to put the violence behind them. Capitalism is alive and well, with many businesses in Angkor Wat thriving.

We were here to visit one of the Seven Wonders of the World, Angkor Wat. The unrivaled majesty of the complex of Hindu temples, built beginning in the 9th century, brings vacationers from around the world, making tourism one of the country’s major sources of income, as in Vietnam.

Our cruise ship, the Seabourn, offered a shore excursion to Cambodia while the ship was docked in Bangkok. When we embarked, we were met by our guide, Kit, who was hired by the Seabourn to “hold our hands” throughout our visit to Cambodia.

Even though the four-year-old, spectacularly designed Bangkok airport is traveler and shopper friendly (with signs in English) few people speak the language. Well, Kit made it really easy. The benefit of traveling with a guide is that he does all the communication and handles all the passports and forms needed in each country. He even traveled on the hour-long flight with us to Siem Reap, the home of Angkor Wat. All the tension dissolved with his helping hand.

Once we landed, we were met by our Cambodian guide who helped us get through customs. We checked in and our group of nine immediately left to visit the Angkor Wat complex of temples in 120 F heat and 90 percent humidity.

They had been abandoned and overrun by massive trees and jungle for centuries. They disappeared from sight until, in 1864, a French naturalist’s diaries describing the area caught the imagination of the international community and work began to bring back the wondrous temple complexes.

There are hundreds, but we visited the Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. Ironically, I was more impressed by the latter. Fortunately, we visited on the second day when the oppressive heat lifted, but it was more than that.

There are towering twisting trees that had enveloped all the temples, but here they did not take them all down as they did at Angkor Wat, so we could see what it looked like when the site was rediscovered. It is a perfect site for an Indiana Jones film and has the added glamour of being the place where Angelina Jolie filmed “Laura Croft, Tomb Raider.”

Many massive carvings that tell the story of the ancient culture are still being restored. In the two days we were there, we saw both sites and then spent some time in the village visiting a local market and a school for sculptors.

The town boasts over 100 hotels and restaurants with room prices ranging from $1 to $2,000.

Our hotel was a 5-star, recently-built Sofitel. In the evenings they offered an outdoor cultural dinner show featuring classical dances and music. I do not know who was sweating more, the performers or me, but my heart went out to them in their impressive, heavily-jeweled costumes and masks. I would have retreated to my air-conditioned room, but I could not be disrespectful to these talented young people.

I had been told it gets very hot in the area, but the negative is overcome by the warm, friendly people, and the enchanting visit to Angkor Thom is one I will remember forever.

The rise of electronic money

Photo by: Bejan Siavoshy

WING workers pitch ANZ’s mobile money transfer system Tuesday at a site close to Phnom Penh’s Russian Market. With ACLEDA Bank and Mobitel set to launch similar systems soon, the market for electronic payments on the move is about to heat up.

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UNITY will be available at the bank this year. It will also be soft launching for internal staff soon."

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 14:01 Ellie Dyer

Mobile money transfer systems such as WING profit as cell use skyrockets

PRESENTED with a handful of cash after a hard day’s work under the glaring lights of a Phnom Penh factory, the thought on many workers’ minds might be “how do I get my wage back to my family”.

If, like an estimated 95 percent of the Kingdom’s 14 million-strong population, your relations do not have a bank account and prefer the

cash-under-the-mattress method of saving, the options could be: Putting the money on a provincial-bound minibus in Central Market for a fee of a couple of dollars; waiting a month or two for a chance to transport the money yourself on a social – but potentially expensive – visit; or buying a mobile scratch card with your wages, then texting the details to a contact in your home town who will exchange airtime for dollars in return for a small commission.

Such methods of cash transfer can be risky for the individual concerned. For the banking sector, they illustrate a potentially lucrative market that until very recently remained completely untapped.

Cambodia’s telcos and banks are targeting unbanked communities through their mobile phones. According to a quarterly analysis by financial consultants McKinsey & Co called Capturing the Promise of Mobile Banking in Emerging Markets, by using mobile phones the cost of serving customers is reduced by 50 to 70 percent, making it possible to offer financial services to a vast population once considered unprofitable.

For Brad Jones, Managing Director of WING, an ANZ-owned company which launched mobile transactions in Cambodia in late 2008, the potential is obvious.

“There are four billion cell phones in the world, but only 1.6 billion bank accounts representing a massive market opportunity for organisations that can develop business models to serve this group,” he said.

WING uses existing channels on mobile-phone networks – including Hello and Mfone – to transfer money from person to person through text. After a user sets up a WING account – for a subscription fee – their money is held by ANZ bank and moved between WING users by SMS.

In its first year of operation, the service attracted 100,000 users – an estimated 56 percent of which were previously unbanked. It is now working with microfinance institutions to expand to loan repayments.

According to Jones, for ANZ this provides them with a base of customers who, over the long term, could have more extensive banking needs. For telcos, it drives SMS traffic and revenue churn.

Mobile finance is quickly winning support amongst other domestic companies. Mobitel, owned by the Royal Group, is launching its own mobile banking initiative called VLOAD, under development with Refresh Mobile. When approached by the Post, a spokesperson for Mobitel declined to elaborate further.

ACLEDA bank is set to offer banking via mobile phone later this year, according to Senior Vice President and Head of Marketing Sok Sophea. He told the Post via email that the UNITY scheme will enable customers to pay bills and transfer money through mobile phone technology. It has been launched in a bid to provide greater convenience for people who want to manage their finances 24 hours a day and also forms part of the bank’s plan to launch new services to “make banking services familiar to everyone”, he stated.

“UNITY will be available at the bank this year. It will also be soft launching for internal staff soon,” he wrote, adding that anyone with a mobile phone will be able to qualify for the service.

Cambodia’s blossoming love affair with mobile banking has been largely driven by the experiences of markets in Africa.

Said to be the brainchild of Vodafone’s Nick Hughes, who helped implement the scheme four or five years ago in Kenya, it quickly became a successful business model.

Speaking in a June interview last year, he said that in excess of 10,000 customers were signing up to Kenya’s M-PESA service each day. That “remarkable” uptake has led Vodafone to launch similar services in Afghanistan and Tanzania.

“It changed the way that money moved around Kenya,” he said.

Other countries have also caught on to the trend, with the Philippines leading the banking revolution. Around 8 percent of its unbanked population has subscribed to mobile banking, McKinsey reported in February.

The sector is rapidly expanding. McKinsey estimates that 120 operators in 70 markets will deploy mobile-money offerings worldwide within the next six to 12 months.

Its report states: “Today, only about 45 million people without traditional bank accounts use mobile money, but we expect that this number could rise to 360 million by 2012 if mobile operators were to achieve the adoption rates of some early movers.”

Analysts at the firm added that by 2012 the sector has the global potential to generate US$5 billion in direct revenue, such as transaction fees and cash out, and $3 billion in indirect revenues, including telco provider churn and higher average revenues per SMS.

NET CONTROL: Government says it wants the last word

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 14:01 Ellie Dyer and Nguon Sovan

THE issue of control has become critical in the future of Cambodia’s Internet provision, as tensions between the private sector and the government have become increasingly apparent this year. For the ICT sector, the first three months of 2010 have been characterised by a growing sense of concern, frustration and at some points, disbelief, as plans to centralise the Kingdom’s Internet infrastructure gather pace. According to Telecom Cambodia’s Deputy General Chin Daro, the government wants to control the Internet to limit access to controversial content, such as pornography or sites which are “against government principles”. The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPTC) has drawn up a plan to create central monitored domestic and international Internet exchange points through which all traffic in Cambodia will be routed. State-run company Telecom Cambodia (TC) is set to be given a monopoly to control the hubs. This means it will effectively control the distribution of all international bandwidth to domestic Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ISPs will also have to pay to use the domestic internet exchanges, which are currently provided free by private companies. The reality of the situation is hitting home for Cambodia’s business community. According to numerous ISP representatives and industry insiders, who have spoken to the Post over the past three months, the plan has the potential to crush a burgeoning sector. Cambodia has around 37 ISPs nationally of which 16 are operational, an MPTC study states. Many ISP representatives say that TC is unreliable and will be unable to cope with the scale of web traffic involved as the new gatekeeper. Businessmen have also pointed out that the government’s planned radical restructuring of the domestic Internet architecture puts at risk more than US$500 million of investment for a scheme which they say has never been implemented in the world before. Accusations have been made that MPTC is awarding TC the monopoly in order to bolster its finances before an initial public offering on Cambodia’s forthcoming stock exchange planned for later this year. TC, sources said in March, would be able to control the market price for bandwidth for its own commercial benefit. TC Director General Lao Saroeun countered last month: “We expect very little revenue from the Internet hub, maybe $30,000 to $50,000 per year. This amount cannot be used to bolster TC to gain credit in the stock market. We will only control Internet content.”

Digital Khmer: a work in progress

How long will it be before every mobile in Cambodia offers Khmer-language texting? IStock

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Any document typed in any font other than Khmer Unicode won’t be signed by Deputy Prime Minster Sok An."

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 14:01 Chun Sophal and Tharum Bun

Some mobiles and computers have offered Khmer for a while now, but its far from universal

THE government has already begun to use the globalised Khmer Unicode script for its ministry Web sites, in a move supporters say will widen the computer language’s use and grow the Kingdom’s information technology sector.

“Any document typed in any font other than Khmer Unicode won’t be signed by Deputy Prime Minster Sok An,” said Noy Shoung, deputy secretary general of the National Information Communications Technology Development Authority (NIDA).

The government’s endorsement of Khmer Unicode brings the font system one step closer to universal acceptance, with developers so far unable to agree on which of several script programs should be used.

Alternatives include Limon and ABC, which opponents say these scripts are too rigid to be useful.

Linguists and programmers have debated for years the best method of unifying the Khmer language encoding system, with an increasing number moving toward Khmer Unicode but others continuing their support for older fonts.

Chea Sok Huor, who has been a member of the Committee for Standardisation of Khmer Scripts in Computers since it began in March 2000, said the green light came “after 10 years of development and countless negotiation[s]” with international companies, including Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo and others.

Chea Sok Huor also works for a group called PAN Localisation, which releases basic tool kits to helps users transition to Khmer Unicode, one of a number of computer languages used to create a usable script in Khmer.

PAN Localisation has until recently distributed software for spell-checks, line breaks and conversions for Khmer Unicode. It also provided Khmer SMS, a third-party application for Java-supported mobile phones that enables users to send text messages in Khmer.

Wide acceptance of Khmer Unicode will allow the Khmer script to be supported by and integrated into software and computing devices, including mobile platforms.

“Software development for mobile devices will become a new trend in the near future,” said Suy Channe, a computer applications specialist.

Because it has a unique coding number assigned to each character, Khmer Unicode works seamlessly between platforms and applications. This means products can be launched without forcing users to worry about so-called “non-standard characters” embedded inside.

“Having Khmer Unicode enables software firms to invest in developing and tailoring software for Cambodian markets, at least seriously,” said Danh Hong, a 39-year-old typographer.

Danh Hong, who attended a Mircrosoft seminar in 2002, said he was optimistic the government move to Unicode edged Cambodia closer to use of the script in future mobile devices and mobile phones.

For example, he said: “Apple’s iPhone comes Unicode friendly.”

“To gain more Cambodian users, big companies like Nokia need to deliver more products that support the Khmer language,” he said.

The Council of Ministers announced in late 2009 that a standardised Khmer character input system be used for official documents and government correspondence.

That announcement marked a move away from 46 other types of script, like Limon and ABC, which cannot be interchanged, making them cumbersome to work with.

“Until recently, more than two months after the sub-decree to switch to Unicode, at least 80 percent of all correspondence at all ministerial levels are input in standard Khmer scripts,” said Phu Leewood, NiDA’s secretary general.

Each script had different supporters, stirring bitter conflicts in computer circles as Khmer Unicode developed and became more popular.

Unicode supporters say the final product will engender mutual communication for Cambodians in the digital age, from email users to Web surfers to software developers. Without Unicode, electronic communications have required workarounds to make text readable at its destination.

English remains the lingua franca for many computer users in Cambodia, especially those youths in their 20s, but a Khmer font, such as that featured in Microsoft Windows 7, could help people get started with computers without a language barrier, experts said.

“Microsoft integrated Khmer language supports, based solely on Unicode, in its Windows Vista when it released the operating system to the market worldwide in January 2007 and continued to improve its Windows 7 user interface,” Chan Nath, a technology specialist in Microsoft’s Development Department, told the Post.

Meanwhile, the dispute between fonts has made typos – in newspaper headlines, on street posters – a “common problem” that needs to be solved, said Nguon Vanchanti, the tech-inclined director of the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh.

The institute recently issued a second version of its Khmer-language dictionary, which was typed in Khmer Unicode.

“The next things will be spell-check and auto-correct,” said Nguon Vanchanti, who manages a staff of 20 people who are constantly inputting data into a nascent e-library of religion and literature.

“We now have 70,000 pages of literary works, once available only in print,” he said. “By making them online in Khmer Unicode-based characters, the text will become not only accessible to large audiences hungry for such wealth of content but also searchable in a way that cannot be done with legacy fonts.”

Chhit Vannarith, who studied mathematics for years in Russia before creating the Limon font, welcomed the adoption of Khmer Unicode.

“I’m delighted about it and looking forward to new growth of technological developments in the next few years,” he said.

The adoption of Unicode will also help digital libraries, Chea Sok Huor said.

“When we have good optical character recognition software, we’ll be able to have a wealth of knowledge and resources in our native language on the World Wide Web for Cambodians,” he said.

Character recognition software would allow places like the Buddhist Institute and others to build searchable digital databases and archives from print documents.

Exposing domestic violence

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:07 Brooke Lewis and Khuon Leakhana

TWO years ago, when Minh Sarom began organising talks on domestic violence in her native Tek Phos district, in Kampong Chhnang province, she found recruiting women easy. The men, however, proved reluctant, particularly those who stood to benefit the most from the sessions.

“Sometimes it is difficult, because perpetrators join for the first conversation, but it touches their hearts so much that they don’t come to the next meeting because they are afraid or embarrassed,” said Minh Sarom, a district office manager for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

Srun Rachana, community capacity enhancement coordinator for the UN Development Programme’s Access to Justice Project, which has funded talks in Kampong Chhnang and in four other provinces, said this is a common problem.

“Normally, domestic violence is caused by men, and they are afraid to join the meetings because they will get many complaints from other people,” he said, adding that women who attend the meetings often make excuses for their husbands – saying they are too busy farming or, in some cases, drinking.

Minh Sarom is one of dozens of people who have been trained by the Access to Justice Project in the past two years to work as facilitators in an effort to overcome this barrier.

On Tuesday, organisers and government officials marked the end of the facilitators’ training, and presented the results of a survey intended to measure the programme’s effectiveness thus far.

Overall, there were several indications of progress in the 89 participating villages. Sixty percent of survey respondents had attended at least one of the discussions, and reported incidents of domestic violence were down 27 percent compared to when the programme started.

However, other findings were troubling. Drunkenness remained the most commonly cited cause of domestic violence in the villages, and only 33 percent of respondents recognised sexual violence as a form of domestic violence.

Minh Sareth, a facilitator from Kampong Speu province’s Baset district, said the link between drinking and domestic violence had been borne out by cases in which she had intervened.

She described one that she moderated last year:

“The husband would drink very long with his friends, so his wife went to get him. When she saw her husband drinking with his friends, she scolded him in front of them. This made the husband angry with her, and he started to beat her and pull her hair. His friends tried to stop him and he stopped, but when he got home he continued to beat her.”

Noum Sam Am, a facilitator from Sen Monorom town in Mondulkiri province, said he had recently moderated a case in which a husband beat his wife to punish her for gambling.

“She was obsessed with gambling.... When I asked the husband, he said his wife did not cook for him and so he beat her,” Noum Sam Am said.

“I called the village chief to talk with the husband and explain to him not to beat his wife, and we informed him that if he continues to beat his wife he will be punished by law.”

Arezo Malakooti, a legal expert from the Access to Justice Project, said that, on the whole, the programme had succeeded in one of its aims: encouraging local authorities to aid in combating domestic violence.

“Local authorities – the elders and other traditional authorities in the villages – their understanding had also changed, which is positive because often if women are going to report something ... [they] will go to the traditional authorities first,” Malakooti said.

She said action on the part of officials was essential to ensuring that laws against domestic violence are enforced.

“In the majority of cases, the perpetrators are not punished,” she said, “so a culture of impunity is created where people feel like they can continue to behave in this way.”

Climate blamed in fall of Angkor

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:07 James O'Toole

DROUGHTS and flooding may have been decisive factors in the mysterious collapse of the ancient Khmer capital of Angkor, according to a new study released this week.

In a paper published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, researchers Brendan Buckley, Daniel Penny and their collaborators argue that climate variation strained the city’s complex and fragile infrastructure beyond repair, leaving it unable to support its population.

“The lack of textual records dating after the 13th century has created a historical [gap] and divergent, unresolved claims about the causes, rate and timing of Angkor’s decline and fall,” Buckley and his colleagues wrote. “Historians and archaeologists have, with a few notable exceptions, only rarely considered the role played by environment and climate in the history of Angkor.”

The researchers based their argument on an analysis of growth rings from cypress trees discovered in Vietnam that were almost 1,000 years old.

By looking at the varying widths of the growth rings, Buckley and his colleagues determined that Angkor was subject to two major droughts – one in the mid 1300s, and another in the early 1400s – that coincided with the period in which the Khmer imperial capital is believed to have begun an accelerated decline.

These droughts, which likely had a severe impact on Angkor’s agricultural productivity, were followed closely by unusually intense monsoon seasons that led to floods and damage to the system of canals and baray upon which residents depended for water management.

“What our study demonstrates ... is that decades of weakened summer monsoon rainfall, punctuated by abrupt and extreme wet episodes that likely brought severe flooding that damaged flood-control infrastructure, must now be considered an additional, important, and significant stressor occurring during a period of decline,” the researchers wrote.

Buckley said the research was part of a broader project looking at medieval droughts in Asia, and described his recognition of its relevance to Angkorean history as “one of these serendipitous kinds of things”. It was only when he was dating the tree rings, he said, that he realised they bore such a close relation to the period of Angkor’s decline.

Research in Siem Reap was conducted in part by scientists from the Greater Angkor Project (GAP), a research group run out of the University of Sydney. GAP deputy director Dougald O’Reilly said the study built on the insight of French archaeologist Bernard-Philippe Groslier, who argued in 1979 that the famed Angkorean canals were part of a hydraulic system that was not in place simply for religious reasons.

The new study, O’Reilly added, lends depth and context to the emerging understanding among archaeologists that Angkor’s demise was more complicated than traditional theories have suggested. In the past, scholars have ascribed the decline to conflict with the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya and the flight of the empire’s elite to what is now Phnom Penh.

“The work that Buckley and Penny and [their collaborators] have done is really another piece of the puzzle that shows us that the decline of Angkor was a much more nuanced situation,” O’Reilly said.

Though Buckley was careful to note that a number of factors were likely involved in Angkor’s ultimate failure, he said the city may have been undone in part by its own feats of engineering.

“It just may have been ... [that] they weren’t able to cope with the vulnerability that they had because their system was so immovable,” Buckley said. “They didn’t have the ability to adapt very nimbly to these sorts of changes in their environment.”

With changing sea and river levels an issue of concern today in Southeast Asia, Buckley said, the importance adaptability in the face of a changing climate is a lesson that might be drawn from Angkor’s experience.

“Nature’s still dominant, and we don’t really control it like we’d like to,” he said. “The question is, how able are you and how nimble are you in adapting and adjusting to it, and that’s going to be the critical issue.”

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SAM RITH

’97 grenade attack remembered

Photo by: Heng Chivoan

Monks chant blessings during a ceremony marking the 13th anniversary of the bloody grenade attack on an opposiiton protest that left 16 dead.

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:07 Meas Sokchea

MORE than 100 people turned out for Tuesday’s ceremony marking the 13th anniversary of the 1997 grenade attack that left at least 16 dead and scores injured during a peaceful opposition rally in Phnom Penh.

During the annual ceremony, held at the commemorative stupa marking the site of the attack near the former National Assembly, participants lit incense and laid wreaths, while victims’ relatives and Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) officials called for fresh investigations into the attack.

SRP President Sam Rainsy, who was injured in the attack, told his supporters by phone from France that finding justice for the victims and their families was only a matter of time.

“I have belief that justice must win someday. We will show the reality so that national and international public opinion see clearly that the highest officials were involved in the cowardly grenade attacks on March 30,” said the opposition leader, who is currently in self-imposed exile in France.

“Even if I am far away, my heart and my senses are with all of you. I would like to tell the Khmer people that we cannot forget March 30, 1997.” He added that the development of an independent court system would lead to the arrest and punishment of the perpetrators of the attack.

On March 30, 1997, four grenades were thrown into the crowd at a rally held by the opposition Khmer Nation Party (KNP) – the predecessor to the SRP – killing and injuring scores of bystanders. Though the results of a subsequent FBI investigation of the incident have never been fully made public, Kong Korm, the SRP’s acting president, hinted on Tuesday that Brigade 70 – Prime Minister Hun Sen’s personal bodyguard unit – was involved in the attack.

He said that during the KNP’s demonstration, the prime minister’s bodyguards were present at the scene just prior the grenade explosions, and that the attackers made their escape towards a perimeter set up by Brigade 70 soldiers.

“The perpetrators did not seem afraid and escaped in the direction of the security forces that were known to be the bodyguard forces of Prime Minister Hun Sen,” Kong Korm said, adding that as the attack was being investigated, the Cambodian authorities did not cooperate fully with the US agents.

Sam Vanny said at the ceremony that she does not wish for revenge against anyone, but she also called on the government and FBI to reinvestigate the attack and ensure those responsible are punished.

“We do not have rancour or a wish for revenge, but legal obligations, democracy and justice demand that the government is responsible for this,” she said. “We would like to call for the government again to revive its inquiry into the above criminal case to reveal the perpetrators and backers and take them to the court,” she said.

Meanwhile, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) also said the Cambodian government has failed to take any steps to investigate the attacks, despite strong evidence of the involvement of Brigade 70.

“The United States claims that human rights and the rule of law are primary policy goals in Cambodia, yet it withdrew the FBI just when it was close to solving the case and has done nothing for over a decade to resolve it,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in the statement.

“Members of the personal bodyguard unit for Hun Sen were deployed in full riot gear at the rally. They opened their lines and allowed the grenade throwers to escape, then threatened to shoot people trying to pursue them,” he added. “This attack has cast a shadow over Cambodia that will only be lifted when the perpetrators are brought to justice.”

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but Phnom Penh municipal police chief Touch Naruth dismissed the accusations, saying that authorities have tried to investigate the attack but lack enough evidence to determine who is responsible.

“Normally to make an accusation, it is necessary for them to have evidence and if there was no evidence, how can we accuse? If Phnom Penh authorities do not want to investigate, it means that the FBI does not want to investigate as well,” he said. “We wanted so much to cooperate, but we tried hard, and there was no evidence.”

General claims victory in Thai border conflict

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RCAF Deputy Commander in Chief General Chea Dara delivers a speech to students and teachers at the National Institute of Education on Tuesday.

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:06 Thet Sambath

A SENIOR military commander said Tuesday that Cambodia has prevailed on both the military and diplomatic fronts in its standoff with Thailand over disputed land near Preah Vihear temple.

“I am here to tell you all about our victory against the Thai soldiers on the battlefield. We are the winner, and we won both the battlefield and diplomatic fight under Samdech Hun Sen’s leadership,” said General Chea Dara, deputy commander in chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF), in remarks before more than 1,000 students, teachers and officials at the National Institute of Education.

Chea Dara also hailed the construction of roads close to the temple, which he said had facilitated the movement of troops and allowed more Cambodians to settle in border areas.

“Fifty percent of the Thai soldiers were withdrawn recently to Bangkok to solve their internal issues, and they will not dare to attack Cambodian soldiers again,” he said.

Fighting near Preah Vihear has claimed at least seven lives from both sides since July 2008, when tensions over the temple’s listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site erupted. Chea Dara claimed last week, however, that 88 Thai troops had been killed in fighting since 2008.

Rath Huot, deputy director of the National Institute of Education, said after Tuesday’s speech that he was very glad to hear directly from Chea Dara about progress at Preah Vihear and the situation on the front line, adding, “It is useful for students and teachers here to learn it.”

Chea Dara also raised accusations that opposition leader Sam Rainsy had aided the Thai military during the recent standoff. “[Sam Rainsy] met Thai officials, and he passed the sword to Thai officials against Hun Sen,” he said. He did not add any other details about the alleged meetings.

Sam Rainsy Party spokesman Yim Sovann dismissed that claim outright. “We Cambodians do not contact any country to mistreat Cambodians and fight against Cambodians. Sam Rainsy was voted for by Cambodians; he has served Cambodians and does not serve foreigners.”

Transparency urged for nascent oil sector

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:06 Irwin Loy

CAMBODIA is taking strides to ensure that its nascent extractive industries will be well managed, an official with an international NGO said Tuesday, though observers warned that the government must be more transparent with incoming revenues.

With expectations raised by the discovery of potential offshore oil reserves, observers say extraction in Cambodia is at a critical stage.

At a conference Tuesday discussing industry governance, a representative of the NGO Oxfam America said he believed Cambodia is on the right path to avoiding pitfalls that have challenged oil-producing countries in the past.

“On the part of the government and the private sector, it is a finite resource we’re talking about. ... That opportunity has to be used well, not wasted,” said Brian Lund, the East Asia regional director for Oxfam America. “As we see it at the moment, the government of Cambodia is working in the right direction towards making sure that it is used well.”

Lund cited the establishment of an inter-ministerial working group on revenue management as a reason for optimism, as well as statements from officials suggesting that Cambodia may sign on to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a set of international standards that require governments to disclose their earnings from oil, gas and mining.

“It’s definitely part of the discussion,” Lund said of the EITI. “But there is still considerable work to be done before we get to the level of transparency and a level of accountability you would ask for in EITI.”

So far, it has been rare for authorities to release basic revenue figures.

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EXPECTATIONS HAVE TO BE ... TEMPERED. IT’S NOT JUST A HUGE GOLDEN EGG.

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Last week, for example, an official with the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority confirmed that PetroVietnam and French energy firm Total together gave the government US$26 million in signature bonuses and social funds in January, marking a substantial rise over the previous reported revenue of $800,000 in December.

Yet the figure was shown only during a conference presentation by a government finance officer; it was not part of any official disclosure.

Observers say they struggle to find official information detailing where revenue is going.

“Currently, we get information from newspapers,” said Chhith Sam Ath, executive director of the NGO Forum.

“We know the companies that are granted for exploration. However, this is all the information we get.”

The government must be more forthright going forward, he said.

“There is a need to provide transparency and accountability in the sector in order to ... ensure that the benefits from oil and gas will benefit all of Cambodia,” Chhith Sam Ath said.

In the meantime, some are urging Cambodia to rein in expectations sparked by the discovery of potential offshore oil reserves.

“When someone mentions that there is gold or oil, there is an immediate expectation amongst the community at large that this is enormous, that it’s fantastic,” said Oxfam’s Lund. “But in fact, expectations have to be properly tempered. It’s not just a huge golden egg. There is a lot of complexity and ups and downs.”

Last year, officials said the Kingdom would not begin receiving revenue from potential oil and natural gas concessions until 2013 at the earliest.

Court expels Italian sex criminal

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Italian national Fabio Cencini leaves the Court of Appeal in Phnom Penh on Tuesday, after judges suspended his two-year sentence on child sex crimes and ordered him to leave the country.

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:06 Chrann Chamroeun

THE Court of Appeal on Tuesday ordered an Italian national convicted of performing indecent acts against six minors to leave the country after suspending a two-year jail term handed down in 2008, a decision that outraged the victims’ lawyer.

Fabio Cencini, 45, was arrested in February 2008 in Sihanoukville and charged with sexually abusing four girls and two boys aged between 8 and 13 years. He was found guilty and originally sentenced to two years in prison, with three months to be served immediately and the remainder to be served pending his appeal.

However, presiding judge Seng Sivutha ruled Tuesday that the remaining 21 months would remain suspended, with Cencini free to go after serving three months in prison from February to May 2008.

“It is a misdemeanour crime, and in the two years since he has been out on bail he has not committed another crime,” he ruled.

The court also ruled that Cencini had to pay a 2 million-riel (US$477) fine and 2 million riels to each victim, and ordered him to leave Cambodia.

Noun Panith, the victims’ lawyer provided by child protection NGO Action Pour Les Enfants, said he would continue to plead with prosecutors to ensure that Cencini serves more jail time.

“We are terribly sorry for the Appeals Court’s decision, which was contrary to the original ruling,” he said. “It was very strange for the Appeal Court to not uphold the entire lower court conviction but suspend the rest of his sentence.”

Cencini, speaking to the court, said he would go home after being set free. “I would like to request court officials to let me go home and visit my elderly parents in my country by providing me my confiscated passport.”

Tith Savuthy, Cencini’s lawyer, said the decision to suspend the rest of the sentence was “acceptable” and helped clarify the original sentence handed down in provincial court.

Thais ready for Mekong summit

via CAAI News Media

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:06 Sam Rith

THE Thai government has announced that it will deploy more than 5,000 soldiers and police officers to ensure the safety of regional leaders, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, at the First Mekong River Commission Summit in Hua Hin later this week.

Pimuk Simaroj, an assistant to Thailand’s minister of environment, said a committee has been set up specifically to oversee security for the summit. “The committee will evaluate the situation day by day,” The Nation newspaper quoted him as saying.

The four-day talks start Friday, and a Cambodian delegation led by Hun Sen is set to attend Sunday and Monday.

Hun Sen’s visit comes at a low point in relations with Thailand, after fugitive former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was appointed as a Cambodian government adviser last year.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said that there were no plans for Hun Sen and his Thai counterpart, Abhisit Vejjajiva, to hold bilateral talks during the meeting. “Up until now, there is still no schedule for the two countries’ prime ministers to meet,” he said.

Crisis hits developer of Anlong Veng site

via CAAI News Media

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:00 Soeun Say

DEVELOPMENT Zone Sonte Pheap City Anlong Veng has put its entire project up for sale for US$4 million after the company failed to find clients for properties on the site due to the struggling market, the project owner told the Post Tuesday.

“We stopped our residential building plan,” Sonte Pheap City owner Em Sophary said. “We cannot continue anymore because we don’t have anyone to manage it, and the economy is still not good of late.”

The development, in Oddar Meanchey Province’s Anlong Veng District, has been up for sale since the beginning of the year, “but until now we still have not attracted someone to buy it”, she said.

“We’ve already completed infrastructure, such as water, electricity, a road system and drainage,” she added.

The rest of the plan for flats, villas, a market, resort, school, hospital and 12-hole golf course have all been suspended.

The project began when Cambodia’s property market was booming in 2008, said Em Sophary, but the economic downturn had forced its closure.

Boom turns to bust

She said at the height of the boom she had turned down offers of $7 million for the project, which lies on 58 hectares in Trapeang Prey Commune, about 100 kilometres from Siem Reap town.

“I decided not to sell it, because I thought I could double the price by developing a housing project for sale,” she said. “But when the world economic crisis hit Cambodia so hard, the Cambodian property market – everything – became so quiet. I’m very disappointed.”

Keuk Narin, secretary for the National Valuers Association, said Tuesday that the group would be hard-pressed to find a buyer so far from a major town.

“It’s a really hard sale,” he said, noting that even city developers are having a hard time selling their properties. “I don’t believe they will be able to sell it at this time.”

The government is trying to promote Anlong Veng as a tourism hotspot in the Kingdom on the back of its numerous sites associated with the Khmer Rouge era – the town is the site of the grave of Pol Pot, the former leader of the Khmer Rouge regime, and the house of Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge commander in charge of the Southwestern zone.

Price rises fuelled February inflation climb

via CAAI News Media

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:00 Steve Finch

CONSUMER price index (CPI) inflation accelerated in February, according to the latest government figures, as food and fuel prices continued to climb.

In its monthly CPI report, the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) said prices rose 7.3 percent last month compared to February 2009, higher than the 6.9 percent annualised inflation in January.

Month-on-month prices climbed 0.2 percent in February, it added.

“The main increase for all [the] index group [at a] 7.3 percent rate of inflation in February 2010 was due to ... food and non-alcoholic beverages ... household water, electricity, gas and other fuels,” the report said, also citing healthcare costs, tobacco and clothing.

An 8.6 percent spike in food and non-alcoholic beverage prices over the past year contributed to more than half of the annualised inflation rate, the NIS said.

Fuel price rises were also a significant inflationary factor. Gas prices rose 28.8 percent since February 2009, transport costs climbed 12.1 percent, and fuel and lubricants for personal transport were up 33.6 percent over the same period.

CPI data for March, due for release after the Khmer New Year holiday, is expected to show a further rise in the inflation rate after petrol retailers raised pump prices this month to the highest levels since 2008 on the back of rising international crude costs.

Premium fuel at garages in Phnom Penh is currently selling at 4,600 riels per litre (US$1.08). Crude climbed for a second day in New York on Monday, up 0.6 percent to $82.65 per barrel for May delivery.

“We expect prices to increase by an average of 4.5 percent in 2010 in response to renewed demand-side pressures, as economic growth begins to recover and global commodity prices edge higher,” the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit said in a monthly Cambodia outlook published this week.

Towers, towers everywhere...

Photo by: Bejan Siavoshy

The Phnom Penh skyline has become increasingly crowded with mobile phone towers, especially over the past two years as more firms have joined the sector and competition has increased.

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Some towers don't make money, but technically they improve network quality and coverage."

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via CAAI News Media

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 14:01 Ellie Dyer

PHNOM Penh’s skyline may be famed for its golden pagodas and burning sunsets, but the sea of mobile-phone masts looming over the city is indicative of a more modern Cambodia.

As the Kingdom pushes forward in the creation of a developed economy, virtual warfare has broken out within the telecommunications sector.

Low mobile-user penetration, a technology-hungry young population, and the lure of available radio spectrum has created one of the most crowded telco markets in the word.

Up until the mid-2000s, just three providers – Mobitel, Hello and Mfone – operated in Cambodia. Now, nine companies are vying for a hold on the Kingdom’s estimated five million mobile subscribers.

With this scramble for customers, millions of dollars in investments have been made to build domestic network provision for each firm – centered around a main switch, a base-station controller and a great number of towers to relay signals.

In such a fiercely competitive market, infrastructure sharing has been limited to a handful of sites. The capital – where many providers started the roll out of network provision – has become a forest of towering metal.

An industry expert, who preferred to remain nameless, told the Post that each network needs around 100 towers to cover the capital. A saturated Phnom Penh, therefore, could hold nearly 1,000 transmitters, each costing between US$30,000 and $40,000.

In rural locations, according to the expert, the cost of a tower could rise to $120,000 – that’s before power costs have been accounted for.

For many, the mass of Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) has become an indicator of the lack of sustainability in the market.

Gary Foo, marketing manager for Hello, a mobile operator present in the Kingdom since 1993, said: “Cambodia is one of the world’s most competitive markets.”

He believes that consolidation is on the horizon.

“We will really start to see telcos stopping business or operating at a minimum level of activity. It will have to come to that. But how soon it will come I don’t know,” Foo said.

This view has been reiterated by an industry insider, who preferred to remain nameless. He estimated that given the national average revenue per user of about $5 per month, the total market is only worth around $300 million per annum.

“Compare that to the cost of investment, it’s an equation that is working against operators. I believe there is room for three, maybe four, providers,” the expert said.

However, while the fight for survival continues, towers will continue to be built.

The scale of development can be best demonstrated by Beeline – which entered the Cambodian market last May. An annual report by its Russian parent company Vimplecom, released this month, stated that in 2009 the company built 552 base transmitter stations in Cambodia, covering 70 percent of the Kingdom’s population.

According to a map of its coverage, its network is concentrated around the densely populated south and thoroughfares leading to the north-west, as well as areas surrounding Siem Reap and Battambang.

The telecoms newcomer is not the only recent addition to the sector to focus on building capacity.

According to Smart Mobile CEO Thomas Hundt, his company plans to at least double the amount of users by the end of 2010 while enhancing and extending its coverage.

As major towns reach saturation point in the mobile game, rural populations are becoming increasingly important in the industry.

Hello aims to ensure customer loyalty through producing competitive pricing, but also entering growth areas of the sector. Foo states this has meant becoming active in untapped rural populations.

“That’s where the next area of growth is going to come from,” he said. “In provincial areas, there is less competition.”

The importance of rural mobile growth, and its impact on communities, has been illustrated by the actions of Vietnamese-run Metfone.

An industry insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, believes it is picking up first-time users by aggressively targeting such populations.

For instance, in September last year it switched on a tower on military-controlled Koh Tang Island, three hours by boat from Sihanoukville. Sitting atop the island’s highest point, coverage extends around 50 kilometres over open seas.

According to Managing Director Nguyen Duy Tho, speaking in December, the decision still made sense from a business as well as a social perspective.

“This is our business philosophy,” he told the Post. “Some towers don’t make money, but technically they improve network quality and coverage.”

The social impact of such expansion cannot be underestimated. The introduction of technology can spark economic growth and development.

According to Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), speaking late last year, for every 10 percent increase in mobile teledensity, a measure of the number of phones per 100 people in a given area, there is a 0.7 percent growth in economic output in the area.

Mobile towers also demand sustained electricity supplies. According to Hello, the introduction of a tower can ramp up energy provision for a community by up to eight times. Anecdotes of children reading books under the lights of mobile towers have been bandied around the capital.

However, perhaps the days of the jungle of towers are dated, albeit not without a fight.

Article 50(b) of Cambodia’s draft telecoms law – which lawyers hope to be in place within the next 12 to 18 months – states: “A licensee shall share the facilities with other licensees”.

This has been interpreted by the private sector as a way to introduce sharing of mobile network towers and concerns have been raised that this could reduce incentives to build new BTS sites.

Formal feedback on the law, which is being considered by the government, reads: “The private sector is concerned that it may be premature to import concepts of facility sharing from more developed jurisdictions into Cambodia before market forces have had an opportunity to work.

“For now, the Private Sector submits that the long term interest of end users in Cambodia will be best enhanced by a regulatory regime which encourages the construction of further infrastructure.”

So, in the meantime, expansion is set to continue. But for how long, time will tell.

Mobile accessories

via CAAI News Media

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 14:01 Soeun Say

THE market for mobile phone accessories has evolved in recent years, say vendors, as phone users adapt their tastes and hardware markets expand. But some of that growth has been checked by the economic downturn, they added, even if 2010 is looking like a better year than last.

While the Kingdom’s economy grew through the middle of 2008, led by a boom in real estate and property, mobile merchants like Chhim Chenda, the 28-year-old owner of the Hak Se Phone Shop, saw their businesses grow. Then crash.

“Recently, business has dropped off by 30 percent or 40 percent, since the world financial crisis affected Cambodia’s property market,” Chhim Chenda said at her mobile phone store, on Phnom Penh’s Sihanouk Boulevard. “At the time, many people came to my shop to buy mobile phones and accessories. However, now it sounds a bit quiet.”

But a slight recovery in Cambodia’s economy has meant an uptick in sales, Chhim Chenda said. “Our business is better than last year, 2008 through 2009.”

The Hak Se shop sells goods that come mostly from China: phones and accessories, as well as phone bags, memory sticks, batteries and chargers. Young Cambodians like to upgrade the models of their phones, Chhim Chenda said, while older customers are fond of changing their phone covers.

And with newer, shinier models come new types of accessories from covers to dangly things that hang off handsets to Bluetooth headsets and those regal looking phone stands that come in a variety of increasingly bizarre designs.

Heng Heang, director of the Kirirom Phone Shop, also on Sihanouk Boulevard, said more and more outlets open each day, indicating an increase in demand for mobile phones and accessories and a market improvement over the past two years.

“My business declined 40 percent to 50 percent during the economic crisis,” he said, adding that sales of accessories had held up better than for expensive handsets because they were much cheaper.

And tastes for accessories are changing all the time, he said.

“Five years ago, Cambodians like to play with electric lights on the mobile phone, but now that is already out of date,” he said.

Phone customers spoken to by the Post said that sometimes their appetite for phone accessories spiraled out of control – changing covers, in particular, can become addictive.

“Only two years ago, I used about 12 phones, and I always changed the mobile-phone cover to upgrade from red to black and black to blue – and also shiny plastics – every month,” said Ouk Sarath, a 19-year-old security guard at Phnom Penh Centre.

It don't mean a thing if it aint got that ring

via CAAI News Media

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 14:00 Bejan Siavoshy

LIN Sok, 15, and Thy Da, 15, sit in front of a mobile phone service shop on Sorya Shopping Centre’s third floor, chatting each other up, waiting for the shopworkers to finish installing new content on Lin Sok’s phone.

As her mobile is handed back to her, she cycles through its menu to check the new add-on, a Khmer-to-English dictionary. When asked if she also had any new ringtones added, she said, “No, I already have ringtones on my phone that my friends sent me on Bluetooth, I don’t have to come here to buy them.

“All our friends share them between each other,” Thy Da chimed in, explaining that, when new songs are released, someone within their circle of friends will have it as a ringtone and share it with everyone via a Bluetooth device. “Either that or, if you have access to a computer, you can just get a cable, connect to your computer and put the song on to your phone yourself,” she added.

Mobile-phone-wielding youths all over the world have coveted the latest ringtones since Finnish mobile provider Radiolinja, now Elisa, decided to market music as a downloadable ring in 1998.

Following the inception of this technological phenomenon, which subsequently birthed an industry that annually pulls in billions of US dollars across the globe, the popularity of personalising the sound one’s phone makes has reached every corner of the globe.

Although there are no official figures publicly available of ringtone sales in Cambodia, the ringtone boom looks to have accompanied the growth of mobile phone users in the Kingdom, which increased from 660,933 in 2004 to last year’s whopping figure of more than five million users, according to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

With Business Monitor International (BMI) forecasting a 26 percent annual increase in Cambodia’s mobile subscribers up to 2014, according to their Telecommunications report for this year’s first quarter, the trend of ringtones and personalised phone content will only continue to grow.

“All my ringtones I get from my friends. We all share with each other,” said Py Te, 18. “They all have so many songs, but I just keep one ringtone on my phone. I can change it anytime a new song comes out because I know one of my friends will have it.”

“There was a time when business grew fast…. But with all the people selling ringtones now and kids trading with each other on Bluetooth, there is still business, but I have only seen a small increase in people buying ringtones,” said Mao Sophal, who owns a ringtone business on the corner of streets 67 and 142 in the capital. The going-rate for a ringtone on the street is 500 riels (US$0.12).

Sith Rithy is self-taught in the trade of providing personalised mobile phone content. It was his interest in computers that led him to open up his business. The most common way Sith Rithy provides the songs is simply to buy the disc from a shop, then extract them onto a computer’s hard drive. From there, Sith Rithy said that you have to convert the music into whatever format the phone will accept, typically MP3.

Cambodia’s newest entry in an already cluttered mobile market, Smart Mobile, is optimistic about maintaining their customer base in the ringtone business.

Since the company entered Cambodia in February 2009, Smart Mobile claims the number of subscribers downloading their ringtones has grown monthly, according to an emailed statement by Public Relations Leader Lav Srey Dett.

Smart Mobile remains confident their service will be successful because “we can always offer the easiest and most convenient way for subscribers to get their favorite tunes as a ringtone ... no matter if you need a high quality MP3, or a polyphonic melody – we offer all.”

But with free content so readily available, the jury is still out on whether the ringtone can be a moneymaker in Cambodia.

Cell phone stratification

via CAAI News Media

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 14:00 Jemma Galvin and Dene Mullen

You can buy expensive cars and clothes, but in the Kingdom you're worthless without a handset that rings and blings

TELEGRAPHING wealth has been en vogue among the elite since well before the beginning of the Julian calendar.

Formerly the preserve of the Roman ruling classes, the way of the peacock has now been diluted to such an extent that it includes luminaries such as the girlfriends of professional footballers.

Nowadays, the burgeoning middle class in Cambodia are becoming just as likely to flash their cash as Cristiano Ronaldo’s latest bedfellow. Monstrous cars and glitzy designer clothes are becoming essential status symbols. Yet what’s even more crucial, and more accessible, is a blinging mobile phone.

Mobile usage in the Kingdom is increasing at lightning speed and with nine service providers now in operation, competition is fierce.

Of course, the most important part of all this social liberation for locals is how to look good while doing it. Cambodia is swimming in handsets; from the most basic throw-it-against-a-brick-wall-and-it-won’t-leave-a-scratch US$20 Nokias to sleek, top of the range numbers replete with up-to-the-minute technology like 3G and dual SIM capabilities.

Hitting the myriad street shops flogging every type of phone imaginable, the predictable preference of many shoppers at the moment is the iPhone. A genuine in the stores will set you back hundreds of dollars but head to Street 182 and you can score a knock-off for a reasonable $55. It doesn’t come with 3G but according to Tep Sovatha, the owner of Heng Sokchamrern Phone Shop, many customers aren’t bothered by this and simply want the “look” of owning an iPhone.

Tep Sovatha says that touch screens are by far the most popular feature her customers seek and the Nokia X6 ($68), which also has dual SIM capabilities, is the second-biggest seller after the fake iPhone.

Heng Sokchamrern shifts about three phones a day. Assuming each of the other hundred or so identical shops on the same street performs similarly, one doesn’t require a PhD to figure out that’s a whole lot of phones being sold every day.

For those looking for the real deal, Kfour, an electronics store located in the Sorya shopping mall, stocks all of the latest models. Its mobile counter is constantly abuzz with eager tech enthusiasts.

Ouk Raksmey, a 20-year-old retail assistant at the store, says her counter sells around 10 or 11 phones per day with most shoppers spending between $100 and $200.

WiFi is the most important feature Khmer shoppers look for in a mobile phone at Kfour says Ouk Raksmey.

One of the biggest sellers, the Nokia E-72 ($369) comes equipped with mobile Internet and has been instore for around two months. Very similar to the ever-popular BlackBerry, it’s a sharp-looking contraption and is so compact it could slip into the latest Miu Miu clutch without the bat of an eyelash.

The latest BlackBerry, the 2GB 9700B, will set you back $579.

In terms of networks, Ouk Raksmey says Mobitel and Hello are the most popular among her customers, adding that users don’t mind paying the higher price for Mobitel as the coverage is more reliable than that of other providers.

The most expensive handset on display, coming in at a cool $599, is the Sony Ericsson Xperia X-2S/B 3G. Complete with an 8.1 megapixel camera and 4GB of memory, it’s the big daddy of mobile phones in Asia’s former pearl and is usually bought by businessmen, who are also the most likely group to be seen seemingly barking into thin air after buying one of Kfour’s Bluetooth headsets ($49-$75), says Ouk Raksmey.

A survey conducted in November 2009 by Indochina Research found that this group of shoppers, who’d spend between $551 and $600 on a new mobile phone, makes up only 0.3 per cent of buyers.

The majority (66 percent) would spend between $51 and $200 – on par with what sellers have observed on the ground in their stores.

The survey was conducted among 1,019 people, aged between 15 and 49, in three of Cambodia’s provinces and found that 83.6 percent of respondents currently own at least one mobile phone.

Clearly, a mobile phone is the must-have accessory in modern Cambodia. With so many options in terms of style and savings, it’s easy to get the look with or without a pocket full of cash.