Economy and industry

Pangolin scales at US$160 a kilogram, monkeys and wild cats for sale – the online trade in protected and rare species is thriving in Laos, a key Southeast Asian gateway to the insatiable Chinese and Vietnamese markets for animal products. As world leaders gather in Egypt ...

The Phnom Penh-Bavet Highway which will ultimately link the Cambodian and Vietnamese capital cities The 2022 ASEAN summit took place at the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, this past weekend, with China as an official guest. At the event, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced Beijing’s approval of Chinese investment ...

Around 100 flood-resistant houses built in the Mekong Delta have not been used for two decades as upstream dams have disrupted the eagerly awaited flooding season. One afternoon in November, Nguyen Thi Diem, 32, and her husband took advantage of the sunny weather to fix the ...

Glaciers in UN World Heritage sites are among those likely to disappear by 2050 as a result of global warming – regardless of efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures, scientists have warned. Researchers fear their loss is likely to have a devastating impact on vital waterways ...

Despite Vietnam’s solar boom and ambitious climate targets, the fast-growing economy is struggling to quit dirty energy – leaving one of the world’s biggest coal power programmes largely intact. During the COP26 climate summit last year, the government boldly promised to end the construction of new ...

Specifically, the farm-gate price of hogs bred for slaughtering in many localities in the Mekong Delta has decreased by about VND2,000-VND3,000 per kg, to the lowest level in many months. In Can Tho City and many provinces such as Soc Trang, Vinh Long, An Giang, ...

t 3.28am on 29 June 2021, Xu Mingjian crept out of a dorm room inside a gated compound in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and made his way to the second floor, where his friend, another victim of trafficking, was waiting. The two had hatched a desperate plan to ...

Vietnam will achieve the highest growth in the digital economy in Southeast Asia between 2022 and 2025, a report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company has forecast. It will grow at 31% followed by the Philippines with 20% and Indonesia with 19%, according to e-Conomy ...

With electricity exports to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia and even Singapore, Laos has arguably realised its ambition to be the battery of Southeast Asia. The bulk of these exports are from hydropower. Nearly 80 dams dot the landlocked country, and more along the Mekong River are in ...

At 63, Nguyen Thi Ngoc got her first full-time ‘company’ job as a security guard in Ho Chi Minh City. She’d never been to a city before taking the job in early 2021, but the former farmer, originally from the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, ...