Cambodian Economy Reviews

Mobile phone operator, Beeline-Cambodia, introduced a mobile top-up service “Easy Fill”, which allows all Beeline subscribers to be able to top up any amount they would like to have, not required scratch cards to thousands of points of sale.

The new service “Easy Fill” makes its subscribers easier to choose any amount they would like to top up from 50 cents up to $500. And this service is limited to only 11 provinces at present.

Beeline subscribers are able to receive service “Easy Fill” from Beeline sales offices located in 11 provinces: Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, Battambang, Kampong Cham, Kandal, Kampot, Prey Veng, Kampong Chhnang, Kompong Thom and Banteay Mean Chey.

After launch in May 2010, the Beeline distribution network in Cambodia was already comprised of 11 sales offices, more than 6,400 scratch card points of sales and more than 100 branded trade countries across 21 provinces.

Therefore, Beeline subscribers have two options to top up their credit either scratch card or a new mobile service “Easy Fill”. By the way, mobile top-up service of “Easy Fill” is more convenient because customers only have to say what amount they want to top up and denominations start as low as 50 cents.

In order to protect of the depreciation of value of Cambodia’s currency and stabilize the Cambodia’s macroeconomics, the National Bank of Cambodia has tried to raise the value of Riel by purchasing a further US$5 million. The total of amount of dollars the central bank purchased reached US$48 million for the year.

Since mid-April, Cambodia’s currency goes down nearly 2 percent against dollar but it has held steady after the NBC has taken immediately action to stabilized Riel by purchasing the riel in a bid to create artificial demand for the notes and raising its value against greenback.

Tay Nay Im, The National Bank of Cambodia’s Director General, said that in general, appreciates staring October. She added that “the riel depreciates seasonally. We do not see anything abnormal.”

The NBC will auction the next $5 million in five separate $1 million lots from September 01 to 10 at the Central bank’s headquarters in Phnom Penh.

Last year, NBC purchased $54 million.

In the last decades, the telecommunication sector in Cambodia is growing remarkably and the Kingdom has yet to enact cyber law to prevent against the computer-based crime which is threatening Cambodia’s digital security connecting with the globe.

During a workshop at the Council of Ministers’ building in Phnom Penh, foreign and domestic experts also warned that Cambodia was not immune to malicious attempts to spread viruses and steal information.

In the last few years, several websites of government and private websites were hacked. By the way, Cambodia has no legislation specifically related to cyber crimes.

It is noticed that several ASEAN nations have already enacted specific laws on the issue. Even though, there is no specific law to tackle computer-based offenses in Cambodia, such crimes are to some extent recognized by Article 427 to 430 of the Crime Code covering information and computer technology.

MH Bio-Energy Cambodia, which is the Cambodia’s first biofuel plant located in Kandal province, is set to reopen in October after closing earlier this year because of the high crops prices. The plant started operating in Cambodia in November 2008 by investing initially US$30 million.

The plant was closed temporarily in April 2010 due to high domestic cassava prices and a low final selling price on European markets. At the least 10,000 tones of domestic cassava is needed per month to produce ethanol, a compound that can be blended with petrol to reduce carbon emissions.

The plant will restart the process of its production in October which is the period of the annual seasonal harvest of cassava comes. And it is expected that the tapioca price will be going down at that time.

In addition, dry-chip cassava currently costs US$210 per tonne, about 45 percent more than US%145 per tonne last year. The price of the biofuel on the European market is still low, about US$500 per tonne.

“The price of ethanol goes hand-in-hand with the price of oil, so when oil prices go down, bio-ethanol goes down. There was no room for us to increase the price of ethanol in the EU market; that’s why we decided to stop production,” Kim Jung-ho, MH Bio-Energy Cambodia director of administration was quoted by the Post.