About Cambodia No.1 News Channel
Posted
by Cambodia News
on June 23, 2009
Pol Pot Victims From Killing Fields Plan Resorts by Angkor Wat
By Yoolim Lee and Netty Ismail
More Photos/Details
August
28 (Bloomberg) -- Kith Meng grew up in Australia as an orphan and a
refugee from Cambodia's genocide. He tells of washing dishes and mowing
lawns to make ends meet while living in Canberra. Being a poor outsider
made him stronger, he says, and unusually driven.
Back in
Cambodia since 1991, Kith Meng, 39, has built his Royal Group into an
empire that owns Cambodia's biggest mobile phone company and television
network and is developing a $2 billion resort and casino on a
fishermen's island on Cambodia's coast. The country's most successful
businessman, he supports Prime Minister Hun Sen and benefits from his
ties to the government, which granted the 99-year lease on the island
for his resort. Kith Meng is a Neak Oknha, an honor the royal family
confers on a few of the wealthiest members of society.
Black-and-white
photographs of Kith Meng's parents adorn one wall of his office in the
capital city of Phnom Penh. They starved to death during Pol Pot's
reign, when Cambodia's fertile countryside became the killing fields --
two victims among the 1.7 million, or 20 percent of the population, who
perished. Kith Meng fled the terror, first to a refugee camp in
Thailand and then, in 1981, to Australia. ``Suffering is my mentor,''
he says.
Thousands of former refugees, with their own harrowing
stories, have returned to Cambodia, and now investors hoping to profit
in the next frontier market -- a term Standard & Poor's coined for
economies smaller or less developed than traditional emerging markets
•- are coming to the country, too.
`Discovery Story'
The
entrepreneurial drive and technical skills the returnees bring with
them from overseas are breathing life into the economy. Three decades
after Pol Pot exterminated the country's educated classes and emptied
its cities, Cambodia's gross domestic product is just $8 billion a year.
Political
and business leaders are grappling with poverty, inadequate health
care, poor education and a lack of roads in this nation of 14 million.
Corruption is slowing progress, says Joseph Mussomeli, the U.S.
ambassador.
``The trick with a frontier market is getting the
timing right,'' says Douglas Clayton, who founded Leopard Cambodia Fund
LP last year and is raising $100 million to invest in real estate,
banking and agribusiness. ``Cambodia is really a discovery story -- and
it's being discovered.''
Cambodia grew 9.5 percent a year from
2000 to '07, the fastest pace in Asia after China, which expanded 9.9
percent a year. Political stability under the administration of Hun
Sen, 56, has helped the Cambodian economy take off, says Bretton
Sciaroni, chairman of the American Cambodian Business Council in Phnom
Penh.
Hun Sen
Hun Sen has run the country since 1985. He
came to prominence as a communist while the Vietnamese occupied the
country, having pushed Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge from the capital. He
strengthened his grip with a landslide victory for his Cambodian
People's Party in July's parliamentary elections. An opposition leader
has alleged manipulation of voter rolls, and the royalist party that
shared power in the 1990s has been reduced to two seats in the
legislature.
Clothing exports and tourism have buoyed the tiny
economy, though the revenue of any of the world's 500 largest companies
would still dwarf Cambodia's annual economic output.
A 1994 law
to open the country to foreign investors has encouraged some to put
money in. Approved foreign direct investment rose to a record $4.4
billion in 2006, according to the Cambodian Investment Board. Investors
can own 100 percent of a company, and they face no restrictions on
taking money in and out of the country -- in contrast to China or
Vietnam.
First KFC
From 1994 to 2007, foreign exchange
reserves expanded 16-fold to $1.6 billion. Cambodia is scheduled to
open its first stock and corporate bond markets by the end of 2009.
Global
companies have opened offices in Phnom Penh, encouraged by the robust
economic growth -- and by the prospects of oil and gas development
following a discovery off Cambodia's coast in 2005 by Chevron Corp.
They include power-turbine maker General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp.
and London-based Knight Frank LLP, a property consultant. Kith Meng has
brought Phnom Penh a KFC chicken restaurant, the nation's first foreign
fast-food chain.
Government revenue from Chevron's planned
project could reach $1.7 billion when peak production is reached in
2021, an International Monetary Fund report said last year.
``The
significant oil discovery by Chevron really was the one that pushed me
over the edge,'' says Stuart Dean, president for Southeast Asia at GE,
which also provides aircraft leasing, water treatment and health-care
services. The company may invest in health-care and energy projects,
Dean says. Today in Cambodia, electricity costs three times as much as
in Thailand.
Outdated Views
Still, the business council's
Sciaroni, a former lawyer at the White House under President Ronald
Reagan, says perceptions of Cambodia have not caught up to the changes.
In May, a U.S. State Department official inquired on behalf of an
executive if it would be safe to visit Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat,
the five-towered archaeological wonder. ``He wanted to know about
bandits and land mines,'' he says. ``I said this is ancient history.''
If
Cambodia is about to take off on the same trajectory as Vietnam to its
east or Thailand on its western border, the time to get in is now, says
Robert Ash, a former executive at the asset management arm of insurer
American International Group Inc. ``Where the perceived risks are
greater than actual risks, investment opportunities are the result,''
Ash says. ``Such is the case of Cambodia.''
Investors familiar
with Thailand and Vietnam have been among the first to spot the changes
taking place in Cambodia. ``In the past, when you went to a dinner
party here, everybody would be talking about politics,'' says Leopard's
Clayton, 47, who used to run the Thailand office of CLSA Securities, a
Hong Kong-based brokerage. ``Last year, when I came, nobody was talking
about politics. Everyone was talking about property, investments,
deals, like everywhere else in the world.''
Frontier Market
Besides
Leopard, at least two other private equity funds have been established
to capitalize on Cambodia as a frontier market. Cambodia is outpacing
Asia's other frontier markets in Bangladesh, Laos, Mongolia and
Myanmar, says Clayton. Cambodia is represented by just one company in
the S&P/IFCG Extended Frontier 150 Index.
Marvin Yeo and
Kim-Song Tan, co-founders of Phnom Penh-based Cambodia Investment &
Development Fund, say they noticed the buzz when they visited the
capital city in May 2007 to deliver speeches to senior government
officials on how to develop capital markets.
Indeed, the streets
of Phnom Penh are filled with traffic and roadside vendors who sell
everything from motorbikes and household goods to tropical fruits and
local snacks. Multistory office buildings, residential towers and
bridges are under construction. From 2004 to '07, the number of cars in
Cambodia doubled to 200,000, according to figures from the Ministry of
Public Works and Transport.
Rogers, Faber
Yeo and Tan are
raising $250 million for their private equity fund. They brought in
Ash, the former AIG executive, as an adviser, along with Jim Rogers, a
former hedge fund manager who predicted the start of the commodities
boom in 1999.
Rogers, who has circled the world by motorcycle in
search of investment ideas and now mostly invests his own money, says
he was surprised by Cambodia's progress. ``It's got a lot of great
things going for it,'' he says. Marc Faber, an investor who forecast a
bust in Asia before the region's financial crisis in 1997, is also an
adviser.
Rogers, who has circled the world by motorcycle in search of investment
ideas and now mostly invests his own money, says he was surprised by
Cambodia's progress. ``It's got a lot of great things going for it,''
he says. Marc Faber, an investor who forecast a bust in Asia before the
region's financial crisis in 1997, is also an adviser.
``Cambodia
is Vietnam 8 to 10 years ago and Thailand 20 years ago,'' says Yeo, a
former financing specialist at the Manila-based Asian Development Bank.
He says the boom will move fast in Cambodia, because it's a smaller
country than Thailand or Vietnam and has more pro-business policies.
``You can expect to see very time-compressed growth in Cambodia,'' he
says.
Following Vietnam
Vietnam, with six times as many
people as Cambodia, may be the model -- and the cautionary tale. The
benchmark index for Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange surged almost
fivefold in two years to a peak on March 12, 2007. By June of this
year, it had lost more than two-thirds of its peak value.
Investors
face many hurdles in Cambodia -- not just the risk of getting in late.
In a report this year, the World Bank and International Finance Corp.
ranked Cambodia 145th out of 178 countries as a place to do business.
The assessment weighed criteria such as how difficult it is to register
property, secure credit or move goods across borders.
In
Transparency International's 2007 survey of perceptions about
corruption, the Berlin-based watchdog group put Cambodia among the
world's worst, ranking it 162nd among 180 countries.
``The rule
of law needs to be more central to Cambodian society and business,''
Ambassador Mussomeli said in a speech to mark the opening of an
aluminum can factory in Phnom Penh in December by an affiliate of Crown
Holdings Inc., the U.S.-based packaging manufacturer. ``Cambodia will
lose a great many of its potential investors if it does not fiercely
combat corruption,'' said Mussomeli, who is scheduled to leave his post
at the end of August.
`Shortcuts'
As much as $500 million
a year is diverted from government coffers, the U.S. Agency for
International Development estimated in 2004 in its most recent report
on the issue.
John Brinsden, vice chairman of Acleda Bank,
Cambodia's biggest bank, says the country's attitude toward business is
laissez-faire. ``You are apt to get a few people who're going to take
shortcuts all over the place,'' he says.
Kith Meng, the
country's most prominent business leader, has a gap in his resume. A
chamber of commerce biography says he earned his ``B.S. Economics &
Political Science at the Australian National University'' in Canberra.
He repeated this piece of his biography in an interview.
``The
Australian National University is unable to find any record of Kith
Meng ever attending or graduating,'' Jane O'Dwyer, a spokeswoman for
the school, said in an e-mail. In addition, the degree he describes is
not offered, she said.
NagaCorp
After being told of the
discrepancy, Kith Meng said he attended the school for two years and
didn't graduate. ``What year, I can't recall,'' he said.
``Newly
emerging and developing markets like Cambodia do tend to attract
entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes,'' Brinsden says. He declines to
comment on Kith Meng.
NagaCorp Ltd., a gaming company that has a
government-granted monopoly on casinos in Phnom Penh, initially failed
to list its shares on stock exchanges in Hong Kong and Singapore. The
exchanges said internal money-laundering controls were inadequate.
NagaCorp managed to list its shares in Hong Kong in 2006 after working
with U.S. consultants to develop better practices. It's the only
publicly traded Cambodian company.
``After that experience, we
gathered much more capability and credibility,'' said Malaysian tycoon
Chen Lip Keong, who owns 62 percent of NagaCorp.
Business Meeting
Hun
Sen hasn't passed an anti-corruption law, despite pledging in 2003 to
push it through the assembly. The leader says he wants to diversify the
economy to reduce its dependence on textiles and tourism. Clothing and
other manufacturing account for 26 percent of the country's GDP,
agriculture makes up 31 percent and tourism and other services 43
percent.
Every six months, Hun Sen sits down with top executives
from the private sector to find ways to eliminate obstacles to doing
business in the country. The meeting is broadcast nationwide. Its
decisions immediately get addressed with legislation.
Crown's
can factory got built partly because the government was quick to react
to the company's concerns. In 2005, Crown was hesitating because of
Cambodia's 7 percent import tariff on raw aluminum compared with 1
percent or no tariff in most countries. Company representatives met
with Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh and Economy and Finance Minister
Keat Chhon. Soon after, the government scrapped the tariff.
The company opened its Phnom Penh factory last year. ``You have to listen to the private sector,'' Cham Prasidh, 57, says.
Genocide Survivor
During
the Khmer Rouge genocide, Cham Prasidh survived by disguising his
identity and education. He told the Khmer Rouge he was blind and was
given the task of burying hundreds of bodies of those who were executed
or killed by disease or starvation. Cham Prasidh says he lost 74
members of his family, including his father, a parliament member who
was executed; only his younger sister and brother survived.
Pol
Pot and the Khmer Rouge rose to power in the chaos that engulfed
Indochina during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early '70s. As
fighting spilled across the border and the U.S. Air Force bombed inside
Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge gained strength in remote mountainous areas.
General
Lon Nol, in a coup in 1970, ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk and
overthrew the constitutional monarchy. By 1975, the Khmer Rouge reached
Phnom Penh and toppled Lon Nol. Paris- educated Saloth Sar, who later
took the name Pol Pot, renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea and
declared it was Year Zero, according to David Chandler's book The
Tragedy of Cambodian History (Yale University Press, 1991).
Year Zero
The
Khmer Rouge set about creating a purely agricultural society. Money,
markets and private property were abolished. Schools, universities and
monasteries were closed. Tens of thousands of professionals were
executed and many more citizens died of starvation and disease.
In
the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, black-and- white portrait
photos of thousands of genocide victims fill the walls. The museum is
in a former high school where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned, tortured and
killed an estimated 17,000 people.
In late December 1978,
Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia. They captured Phnom Penh on Jan. 7,
1979. The Khmer Rouge fled to near the Thai border, where Pol Pot lived
until his death in a jungle hideout in 1998.
Hun Sen is a former
Khmer Rouge officer -- he lost an eye while fighting as a guerilla. He
fled to Vietnam in 1977. By 1979, he was back. At the age of 26, he
became minister of foreign affairs in the Vietnamese-backed government.
On the strength of his ambition, bureaucratic skills and loyalty to the
Vietnamese, Hun Sen rose to prime minister by 1985.
Peace
The
Vietnamese remained in the country and fought the Khmer Rouge through
the 1980s. A peace settlement signed in Paris in 1991, restoring the
royal family and setting the country on a path to elections, finally
allowed Cambodia to begin rebuilding.
Cham Prasidh is one of Hun
Sen's longest-serving government colleagues. He returned to Phnom Penh
from the rural areas a year after the defeat of the Khmer Rouge. He
joined the foreign affairs ministry and within three months became Hun
Sen's private secretary.
The violence of Pol Pot's time, and the
uncertain years that followed, have left the country to this day
without the factories, roads and bridges needed to make and move basic
supplies.
Posted
by buy wholesale products
on May 19, 2011
Posted
by louboutinshoes
on April 04, 2012
Posted
by mulberryoutlet
on April 04, 2012
Posted
by oakley sunglasses
on April 18, 2012
Posted
by cheap oakley sunglasses
on May 09, 2012
Posted
by withyoutomboll
on May 15, 2012
Posted
by withyoutomboll
on May 15, 2012
After federal agent Jeff Novitzky testified two weeks warmth and comfort fightlvlong 05-15-2012 ago, for example, a juror asked about the authenticity of evidence that Clemenss former strength coach, Brian McNamee, turned over to authorities in 2008. The strength coach claims to have injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) and saved syringes and cotton balls in a crumpled beer can.Air Jordan 4 Heels, Jordan Heels, Nike Heels, Air Jordan 6 Heels, Nike High Heels
The GM said he didn't even attempt to change Hunter's mind, because Kuala Lumpur nvloushe 05-15-2012 "there's no gray in Dale's life.""I'd rather have him for six months than not at all, because he had quite an impact on this club," McPhee said. "He really taught this club the how of how to win. They all wanted to win. They just didn't know how. The `how' is being a team and sacrificing, and he sure got that out of this club."Nike High Heels, UK Nike Heels, Nike Dunk SB Low Heels, Nike Heels, Air Max 2010 Womens
Posted
by Coach Outlet Coupons
on May 15, 2012
Posted
by Coach Outlet Coupons
on May 15, 2012
Posted
by Oakley frogskins
on May 19, 2012