News
Reduced Rakhine State budget under fire
The incoming Rakhine State parliament will have only half the funds it needs to develop the state, a local MP has complained. The state parliament adopted the 2016-17 budget on 25 January, days before it rose to give way to the new parliament elected last ...
Close to bottom of corruption index but improving slightly
Myanmar still languishes among the world’s most corrupt countries although its performance has improved slightly over the past year, according to a global review released on 27 January. Berlin-based graft monitor Transparency International said that with a better score on perceived levels of public sector corruption, ...
Thai bank buys Cambodian MFI in mammoth deal
In what may be the biggest deal in Cambodia’s financial sector history, Thailand-based Bank of Ayudhya has reached an agreement to acquire the local microfinance institution (MFI) Hattha Kaksekar, with the deal expected to be valued at upwards of $140 million. In a statement released on ...
Ministry presents five-year malaria strategy
With concerns mounting over the increasing appearance of drug resistant strains of the disease along the Thai border, an ambitious five-year plan to eliminate the deadly Plasmodium Falciparium malaria parasite in Cambodia was presented on 27 January by the Ministry of Health. The Malaria Elimination Action Framework ...
Meeting on Cambodia-Thai border has crime focus
Senior officials from Cambodia’s Defence Ministry will leave for Thailand on 28 January for the 11th General Border Committee, which aims to strengthen cooperation between the two countries, particularly on cross-border crime. Keep reading ...
HRW slams NGO Law, court cases in report
In what has become a yearly tradition, Human Rights Watch levelled a broadside of criticisms at the Cambodian government on 27 January, accusing it in its annual report of enacting “draconian” legislation and granting itself broad “arbitrary powers” to suppress dissent. The global report’s Cambodia section ...
Bomb explosion kills two Chinese in Laos
An early morning bomb blast at a road construction site near a military camp in Laos’ Xaysomboun province killed two Chinese officials and injured a third on 24 January, RFA’s Lao Service has learned. The explosion near a work camp outside the Pha Nok Kok village ...
“Myanmar is still the third-most malnourished country in Southeast Asia"
The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) in Myanmar is facing a funding shortfall of $51 million to meet all the needs till the end of 2016. The organisation, which has a 250-strong staff in the country, says it provided food and cash assistance to ...
Up to 30 feared dead in two Hpakant landslips
Deadly landslips have brought more death to Kachin State as two separate collapses in one day at the Hpakant jade mines claimed an unknown number of victims. Local residents fear as many as 30 people may have lost their lives. The first of the two landslides ...
Hundreds of families evicted from Mingalardon
Heavy machinery reduced the homes of several hundred families to rubble in Yangon’s Mingalardon township early on 26 January, leaving residents in the rain with their meager possessions. The families were designated as squatters on the 560 acres of land leased to military-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings ...
