Economy and industry

With the Mekong Delta laboring under large quarantining burdens as migrants return from the southeast region in the thousands, officials fear outbreaks if the localities’ capabilities are stretched. An Giang Province, for instance, had more than 15,000 migrant workers return on motorbikes over the past three ...

Villagers who were evicted from their homes in northern Laos to make way for a new hydroelectric dam remain disenfranchised three years on, according to media reports. The villagers relocated from Xayaburi province in 2018 are housed in resettlement towns where they lack enough land and ...

Lao villagers displaced by construction of the Xayaburi Dam, a hydropower project on the Mekong River in northwestern Laos, are struggling to survive in resettlement towns three years after being moved, saying  they lack sufficient farmland and water to support themselves, Lao sources say. Construction began ...

Cambodia’s move to approve new coal-fired power plants has prompted concern about potential environmental and health costs despite the government pledging to strictly enforce environmental regulations.  The Cambodian government Friday greenlighted the construction of two more coal power plants in Koh Kong and Odor Meanchey provinces, ...

Belarus and Myanmar registered a significant decline in global internet freedom ratings following political turmoil in which authorities in the two countries arrested journalists and blocked access to the internet. In its annual Freedom on the Net report, the global nonprofit Freedom House found digital rights had declined globally for ...

An MRC governance meeting has agreed to a new indicative date to conclude the prior consultation process of the 684-megawatt Sanakham dam. The decision by the MRC Joint Committee means the official six-month prior consultation process that began on 9 September 2019 for the proposed Sanakham ...

A $54 million Cambodia Sustainable Landscape and Eco-tourism Project (CSLEP) will be the World Bank’s largest tourism investment in Cambodia. It will take five years to carry out and will involve seven provinces including the Cardamom Mountains, Southeast Asia’s largest intact rainforest, the Tonle Sap ...

Laos has authorised the mining and trading of cryptocurrencies, in a policy shift by the debt-laden south-east Asian nation that positions it to profit from the crackdown on digital currency mining in China. Analysts said the move was a logical step for the landlocked, communist-ruled country ...

A frequent contributor to National Geographic, Stefan Lovgren often writes about freshwater conservation issues. He covers the Mekong River as part of the USAID project “Wonders of the Mekong”. Follow him on Instagram @mekongwonders or visit his website:  For decades, Nov Lun and his fellow fishermen harvested ...

The Republic will begin trialling the import of renewable hydropower from Laos via Thailand and Malaysia, following an agreement between Keppel Electric and Electricite Du Laos (EDL) announced on Wednesday (Sept 15). The exclusive framework agreement between the two is part of the Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration ...