Adjusted Angkor Passes Extended for a Year to Attract More Tourists

Angkor Enterprise, the state-owned institution in charge of Angkor income management, has decided to extend the deadline of policy to encourage sales of Angkor Archeological Site’s entrance ticket for one more year, until Dec. 31, 2022.
The move is aimed to facilitate and promote tourism services and to ensure the attractiveness of tourists to Angkor Archeological Site as well as to the Kingdom of Cambodia during the COVID-19 pandemic, underlined the Angkor Enterprise in a news release dated Dec. 27.
Under the policy, which has come into effect since Mar. 11, 2021, foreign tourists buying a one-day entrance ticket can visit the Angkor Archeological Park for two days, while the three-day pass will be increased to five days of visit and the seven-day pass to ten days of visit.
Moreover, the one-month entrance ticket will valid for two months; three-month pass, valid for six months; and six-month entrance ticket, valid for twelve months.
A single-day entrance pass costs US$37, a three-day pass US$62, and a seven-day pass US$72.
A report of Angkor Enterprise shows that in the first 11 months of 2021, Angkor Archeological Park in Siem Reap province received 9,488 foreign tourists, earning US$385,696, a year-on-year decline of 97.63 and 97.93 percent, respectively.
In November alone, 2,202 international visitors were registered at Angkor Archeological Park, up over 78 percent compared to the same period in 2020, generating US$85,919, up 64 percent.

Source: Agency Kampuchea Press

Three Trade-related Draft Laws Approved by NA

The National Assembly (NA) has approved three draft laws related to domestic and foreign trade of Cambodia to ease and improve the doing business in the Kingdom.
The approval was made in the 6th session of the NA’s 6th legislature held here this morning under the chairmanship of NA President Samdech Akka Moha Ponhea Chakrei Heng Samrin.
The three draft laws, voted for by 102 lawmakers present at the session, include the draft laws on amendments to the Law on Commercial Enterprises and to the Law on Commercial Rules and Registration, and the draft law on approval on Free Trade Agreement between the Government of the Royal Government of Cambodia and the Government of the Republic of Korea (CKFTA).
The first two draft laws will promote the doing business in Cambodia, ensure the consistency, transparency with the laws and obligations of Cambodia under international conventions, treaties or agreements, and better prepare for economic recovery after the COVID-19 crisis.
CKFTA will be an important driving force to promote trade and investment flow between Cambodia and South Korea with mutual benefit, especially to accelerate the economic recovery of both countries after being seriously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The agreement will also contribute to enhancing long-term, strong partnership, strengthening economic partnership and expanding bilateral trade liberalisation between the two nations.

Source: Agency Kampuchea Press

Cambodia – Market Update: Focus: Effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on food prices, November 2021

Preface
The COVID-19 pandemic has been rapidly evolving since the beginning of 2020. On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) categorized it as a global pandemic. There have been more than 262 million confirmed cases and more than 5.2 million deaths worldwide (WHO, 2 December 2021). In Cambodia, since the first reported case on 27 January 2020, there have been a total of 120,207 confirmed cases, and 2,953 deaths (MOH, 2 December 2021).
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the global economy. Trade and travel have been severely restricted and many countries, including Cambodia and others across Asia, have instituted measures to contain the spread. Since April 2021, Cambodia has implemented a series of lockdowns in partial and/or whole provinces to contain the February 2021 community outbreak.
In order to understand if the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted food availability and access at markets in Cambodia, the World Food Programme (WFP) monitors the retail and wholesale prices of key food commodities (see Annex 1 and 2) in 45 urban and rural markets across the country (see Methods section for more details). An average of 340 traders and market chiefs are called every two weeks using a call center contracted by WFP. In addition to prices, market chiefs are also interviewed to assess market functionality, including supply and demand issues. Additional information is used to interpret the results and understand the broader context.
This update is based on market data collected in the first and third weeks of November 2021. Nominal prices are presented in this report.
This system is based on long-term cooperation between WFP and the Agricultural Marketing Office (AMO), Department of Planning and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF).

Source: World Food Programme

Israel’s Oramed gets Vietnam pre-order for 10 mln COVID-19 vaccine doses

Israel’s Oramed Pharmaceuticals said on Wednesday its Oravax Medical unit signed a deal with Vietnam’s Tan Thanh Holdings for the pre-order of 10 million doses of its oral COVID-19 vaccine that is in clinical trials, Trend reports with reference to Reuters.
The agreement gives Tan Thanh, a drug distributor, the right to sell Oravax’s oral vaccine in development throughout the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, Oramed said.
“The parties have agreed to negotiate follow-on orders potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” it said, adding the ASEAN region has a prospective patient population of about 660 million.
Nadav Kidron, chief executive of Oramed, said its oral COVID vaccine is undergoing Phase I clinical trials and results should be available in early 2022. The vaccine has been shown to work in animal tests, he said.
As a Communist country, Kidron said, Vietnam could decide on a short Phase II trial and then give emergency authorisation. “Potentially, marketing could be very, very fast,” he told Reuters.
As long as Phase I results are as expected, Kidron believes more countries will be interested since the new technology is not likely to require as many boosters as current vaccines. “The idea is that you take it and that’s going to be your dosing and you’re done,” he said.
Last week, Nikki Fried, Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner, said that given the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, she was pushing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to accelerate the review of oral vaccines as an alternative to injections.
“Countries like the U.S. and Israel (which uses the Pfizer vaccine) … may end up being behind because if developing countries step up their game they may be having the newest technologies available to them before the Western world,” Kidron said.

Source: TREND News Agency