Reuters

Vietnam will not sign any new rice export contracts until March 28 at the earliest as it checks whether it has sufficient domestic supplies to cope during the coronavirus outbreak, the government said in a statement on Wednesday. Vietnam’s rice exports rose 4.2% last year to ...

Electricity-starved Cambodia will not develop new hydropower dams on the Mekong River for the next 10 years, a senior energy official said on Wednesday, as it reviews its policy to seek energy from coal, natural gas and solar. The decision means that neighboring Laos, which has ...

China on Thursday said it was helping its downstream neighbors cope with a prolonged drought by releasing more water from its dams on the Mekong River, adding it would consider sharing information on hydrology to provide further assistance in the future. The statement came as a ...

On a wide bank of the Mekong River, yellow markers and visits by surveyors show preparations underway to build Laos’ third and largest dam on Southeast Asia’s most vital waterway. About an hour downstream, in the laid-back tourist centre of Luang Prabang, the dam’s developers heard ...

Thailand’s sugar production is likely to fall 28% year-on-year in 2019/20 to a nine-year low of 10.5 million tonnes as drought curtails cane supplies, the head of a leading trade body told Reuters on Friday. The lower production will limit exports from the world’s second-biggest exporter ...

When the normally murky brown Mekong River turned a brilliant blue late last year, villagers in northeastern Thailand were surprised. Then, this week, unusually large patches of green algae appeared, clogging up nets and making it almost impossible to fish. Both the Mekong’s strange colour and the ...

Thai authorities are trucking drinking water to parts of Bangkok and urging residents to shower less as a worsening drought and rising sea levels have increased salinity, a growing risk faced by many Asian cities, climate researchers said. Bangkok’s water authority said the capital’s tap water ...

The Don Sahong hydropower dam in Laos has begun operations and this week connected its power grid to Cambodia, a Cambodian official said on Wednesday as the country steps up electricity imports after continued power outages last year. Don Sahong, which was designed for an installed ...

Vietnam’s electricity firm EVN has signed five new deals to buy electricity from Laos starting from next year, the state-run company said. The southeast Asian nation faces severe power shortages from 2021, as demand outpaces construction of new plants, with demand expected to exceed supply by ...

Efforts to protect Thai seafood workers from labor exploitation and modern slavery risk stalling as most international brands and retailers refuse to pay their suppliers more to comply with new anti-slavery policies, researchers said on Wednesday. Thai seafood suppliers are struggling with rising production costs as ...