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Mekong Memo Cambodia Weekly: Business, politics, finance, trade & legal news.

Mar 30, 2026

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Headlines:

Hormuz Shock Nearly Doubles Diesel Price

Batteries Included

Three Months Past Ceasefire, Bills Come Due

900,000 Workers Home From Thailand, Debts in Tow

April Fools' Comes Early for Scam Bosses

Fourteen Years for Reporting, Two for a Post

Two Months Locked Out

Invest More, Earn Less

Lab Coats Before Market Access

10,000 Pieces, One God, Five Years of Patience

Hormuz Shock Nearly Doubles Diesel Price

Diesel rose another 5.97% this week to 7,100 riels/ liter, an astonishing 84% spike since the Middle East conflict began squeezing the Strait of Hormuz. Regular gasoline is up almost 42%, liquefied petroleum gas 60%. The government has scrambled through a cascade of measures (see next story), so far to little effect. Prolonged disruption could shave up to 1.3% off regional growth and push inflation up more than 3%. The Kingdom imports every drop of fuel it burns, as seabed reserves remain untapped (a fair bit of it is in areas contested by Thai claims), and holds roughly three weeks of strategic stock. More than 2,000 of the country's 6,300 fuel stations already shut down temporarily in mid-March after the ran dry.

Read more: Khaosod English (traffic enforcement), Cambodia Investment Review (ADB macro forecast), The Sun (weekly price increments), Khmer Times (financial sector risk), VnExpress (station closures)

Batteries Included

Import duties on electric vehicles and green energy gear will go to zero on April 1. Passenger EVs have been cut from a 35% tariff to nothing, plug-in hybrids from 35% to 7%, and a raft of supporting equipment (lithium batteries, solar systems, EV motors) also will land at zero. The cuts are on 179 tariff lines in passenger and freight categories. The General Department of Customs and Excise announced the new rates days after the government cut fuel taxes to try and ease pain at the pump, and wants to throw open the door to importers looking at a market that is now looking a lot more hospitable to anything with a battery.

Read more: Phnom Penh Post (bauxite export cut), The Star (fuel price specifics), Khmer Times (sub-decree number)

Three Months Past Ceasefire, Bills Come Due

The ceasefire on December 27 stopped the shooting, but more than 36,500 people are still unable to return home three months later. Food prices in border markets rose above the overall rate of inflation in March as households stayed away from larger markets and relied on village shops, spooked by the price of fuel and fears of new fighting. The 11th-century Preah Vihear temple, perched on top of a cliff in the Dangrek Mountains and a UNESCO World Heritage site, took damage as a result of the combat last year. Officials think that some structures might even collapse during the upcoming rainy season.

Read more: AP News (temple damage), Straits Times (economic impact), CamboJA News (pact dispute), ReliefWeb (food prices)

900,000 Workers Home From Thailand, Debts in Tow

More than 900,000 Cambodian migrant workers returned from Thailand through last calendar year, and most arrived with debt. About three-quarters of returnee households now owe an average of $5,500, and the majority of those are unable to make payments. The average monthly household income is $64, which needs to be balanced against expenses of $173, a gap that's unsurprisingly is pushing many to borrow more rather than dig themselves out. Only about 30% got any help, mostly short-term food and transport. The result is that more than half of returnees are already planning to migrate again (that’s up from 13% earlier in a previous report) as the Cambodian economy clearly isn’t able to absorb them.

April Fools' Comes Early for Scam Bosses

The April deadline to rid the Kingdom of its scam industry is sending criminal syndicates scrambling to Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand, leaving behind a, perhaps, messier problem than the one authorities promised to solve. The UK has sanctioned Eang Soklim and his Legend Innovation Co., (which allegedly ran the country's largest scam compound, #8 Park, which had housing for 20,000 trafficked workers). London already had a £100 million office block, two mansions, and a helicopter frozen under earlier sanctions against the network. Young Indonesians are now sleeping rough outside their embassy in Phnom Penh, abandoned without passports or wages after their bosses dumped them when enforcement pressure became too much. The syndicates are relocating, rather than disappearing, and Sihanoukville, once a boomtown built on fraud, is now relatively quiet as vendors who serviced the scam economy watch their livelihoods evaporate.

Read more: SCMP, SL Guardian (stranded workers), Protos (UK sanctions specifics), CamboJA News (Sihanoukville vendor impact)

Fourteen Years for Reporting, Two for a Post

Battambang Appeal Court has upheld 14-year prison sentences for journalists Phon Sopheap and Pheap Pheara. They were convicted of supplying information “prejudicial to national defense” after they were photographed with soldiers near Ta Krabey Temple last July, during fighting with Thailand. Thai media later published the images, claiming that unexploded landmines appeared in the background. Also this week, Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced garment union leader Pich Piseth to two years for incitement after he criticized another union president on Facebook. That case began when the other president, Sok Kin, sued for defamation (he later withdrew his complaint). Rights group Licadho now lists Piseth among 97 prisoners of interest detained for activism or expression.

Read more: CamboJA News, CamboJA News (Facebook case)

Two Months Locked Out

Prince Bank customers lined up at the Phnom Penh head office Monday to finally withdraw deposits frozen since January 8, when the bank was liquidated two days after parent company chairman Chen Zhi's arrest for alleged fraud and money laundering tied to online scams. Accounting firm Morisonkak MKA has been converting the bank's assets to cash for refunds, but some depositors are unable to get access to their money after missing a one-month documentation window that closed February 13. Fellow liquidated H-Pay and Panda Bank customers are also pushing the central bank for similar relief.

Invest More, Earn Less

AmCham's 2026 survey of 409 companies shows almost two-thirds of them say that they plan to increase investment in the next year, but the share expecting profits to drop has almost doubled from 20% to 34%. The collision is the result of pressure coming from the spike in fuel costs, a tepid tourism recovery at Angkor Wat, and squeezed margins. About half of those surveyed still expect profit growth, but the other half is getting louder.

Lab Coats Before Market Access

The EU and Germany are putting €2 million ($2.3 million) into a National Agricultural Laboratory, the Kingdom's first ISO-accredited testing facility for food exports. The grant also backs 29 cashew, pepper, and mango SMEs with technical support and financing support. The lab is part of the €24.3 million ($28.1 million) EU-German CAPSAFE program, which was designed to get agribusiness up to European import standards.

Read more: Cambodianess (co-financing), EU External Action (launch)

10,000 Pieces, One God, Five Years of Patience

Five years of work to bring together more than 10,000 sandstone fragments has resulted in a payoff in the form of a whole seven-ton Dancing Shiva. The 16.4-foot, 10-armed, five-faced sculpture was carved from a single block during the 10th-century Khmer empire at Koh Ker, then smashed in the 14th century, before getting further scattered by looting. The statue went on display at the Angkor Conservation Center on March 18. Experts and France's EFEO ran the restoration from between 2020, building on archaeological research that was begun in 2012. The statue will eventually return to Koh Ker Temple, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2023.

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