Royal Group planning 100sq km SEZ in Botum Sakor National Park
May Kunmakara | Publication date 24 November 2020 | 22:00 ICT

The Royal Group of Companies Ltd, a leading local conglomerate, will invest in the construction of a 100sq km special economic zone (SEZ) in Koh Kong province’s Botum Sakor National Park.

This is an apparent bid to capitalise on the ongoing inflow of investment to the coastal province bordering Thailand.

The details of the project were discussed at a meeting on November 23 with Koh Kong deputy provincial governor Ouk Pheaktra in attendance.

In a press release, the provincial administration said participants at “the meeting agreed to and supported the development of the SEZ in Botum Sakor National Park to help improve people’s livelihoods, while a working group requested to minimise [negative] impact on the local residents and biodiversity at the lowest level.

“In addition, the team will perform on-site inspections in Botum Sakor National Park in an effort to study in detail any specific geographical situation.”

Deputy provincial governor and spokesman Sok Sothy told The Post on Tuesday that the company has received approval from the government and the Ministry of Environment for the national park-based SEZ.

Once it settles on a specific site, he said it’ll have to undergo a detailed environmental impact assessment under the review of the ministry and other relevant authorities.

The provincial administration noted that Royal Group expressed an interest in the province’s southern Botum Sakor district, potentially in its southernmost Ta Noun and Thma Sar communes.

Sothy said: “Since the government has already approved the SEZ, the company needs to find a location that is suitable for its investment, and to ensure not to harm the wildlife habitats and environment.
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/ ... ional-park

UPDATE
November 10, 2021
Royal Group to develop special economic zone in Koh Kong province

The Royal Group has been given permission to develop an 8,631 hectare plot in Koh Kong province into a special economic zone (SEZ). A sub-decree dated September 15 reclassified the land in Botum Sakor National Park as state private land, or land that belongs to the state but has no public interest value.

The Koh Kong Committee on State Land Management has been tasked to apply for registration of the reclassified land in Ta Noun commune and hand it over to the Royal Group.

The Ministry of Environment is preparing the legal documents on managing the land in the protected area in Botum Sakor district with the collaboration of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning, and Construction and the Koh Kong Committee on State Land Management.

The Royal Group received notification in principle last year from the Koh Kong administration, which agreed on the SEZ project on 100 square km in the Botum Sakor district.

The provincial administration noted that Royal Group expressed an interest in the province’s southern Botum Sakor district, potentially in the Ta Noun and Thma Sar communes.

The Royal Group is currently constructing a 700 Megawatt coal fired power plant in Botum Sakor district on 168 hectares of land leased from the government.

According to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the construction of the power plant is still on schedule despite disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Koh Kong province shares a border with Thailand’s Trat province. It has one SEZ, the Koh Kong Special Economic Zone, which is owned by LYP Group, located at Neang Kok village in Mondul Seima district’s Bak Khlang commune.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50967880/r ... -province/

Botum Sakor Coal Power Plant
Botum Sakor District, Koh Kong Province, Cambodia
Written by Inclusive Development International (IDI) on March 31, 2021. [Updated Jan 2022].

The Botum Sakor Coal Plant is a 700 MW coal power plant in the early stages of development in southwest Cambodia. The project is owned by a subsidiary of Royal Group, a conglomerate owned by a Cambodian tycoon. Construction has been contracted to a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned Sinosteel. Its approval was fast-tracked in early 2020, and project preparation, compensation for affected landholders, and assessment were conducted rapidly and with minimal transparency. No environmental impact assessment has been made public, and civil society groups remain in the dark regarding the potential impacts of the project and what plans are in place to mitigate its social and environmental impacts.

Basic Information
Chinese Name: 波东沙哥煤电站
Location: Botum Sakor District, Koh Kong Province, Cambodia
Type of project: Energy (coal)
Project Developers: Botum Sakor Energy Co., Ltd. (subsidiary of Royal Group)
Main Contractors: Sinosteel Engineering & Technology Corporation Ltd. (subsidiary of Sinosteel Group Corporation Limited)
Known Financiers: n/a
Cost: 1.34 billion USD
Project Status: Under construction

Project Outline
In February 2020, Cambodia’s Council of Ministers approved two new coal plants, one in Oddar Meanchey Province and the Botum Sakor plant in Koh Kong Province. Six weeks later, the National Assembly approved the projects, with the Senate following suit a few days later. This process appears to have been fast-tracked, and the National Assembly voted at an extraordinary session requested by the Prime Minister. In August 2020, a sub-decree was issued by the government cutting 168 hectares from the Botum Sakor National Park and reclassifying it as state private land, allowing it to be legally leased to the company for 38 years.

The power plant is expected to cost 1.34 billion USD, with a generating capacity of 700 MW. Originally scheduled to bring 350 MW online in 2023 and an additional 350 MW in 2024, the project the project is behind schedule and completion date has been pushed back to 2025. The plant will be constructed under a Build-Operate-Own agreement, which will last 35 years. The government has agreed to purchase 80% of power generated at 7.3 cents per kilowatt. Media reports indicate that 70% of the financing will come from bank loans, with the remainder coming from the developer’s equity. However, it is unclear which banks will provide this financing.

The project owner is Botum Sakor Energy Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of the local conglomerate Royal Group, which is owned by Kith Meng, a powerful and well-connected tycoon. Royal Group has no experience developing power plants, and the construction work will be handled by Sinosteel Engineering & Technology Co. Ltd. Royal Group and Sinosteel first signed an agreement to cooperate on the development of a coal plant back in 2016 during a visit to Cambodia by Chinese President Xi Jinping. This was envisioned as a smaller 450 MW plant in Sihanoukville, but eventually the planned project grew and moved to neighbouring Koh Kong province. Prime Minister HE met with Sinosteel’s chairman in Beijing during a state visit in January 2019, where they discussed the coal plant.

In October 2020, the Chinese government entrusted the state-owned Sinosteel to China Baowu Steel, another central state-owned enterprise, apparently to manage the huge debts that Sinosteel has accumulated due to its aggressive recent expansion (the company has defaulted on several major loans in recent years). This takeover does not appear to have slowed the project down though, and the following month Sinosteel Engineering & Technology signed a 1.1 billion USD engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract with Botum Sakor Energy. The plant will run on imported coal, and the development plan includes a jetty for docking and offloading coal from abroad. In addition to the power plant and dock, the company is required to develop water infrastructure for the plant and transmission infrastructure connecting the plant to the Botum Sakor substation.

There has been limited updates on the project since mid-2021. Satellite images from January 2022 show that progress is limited to land clearance, and construction has not yet commenced.
https://thepeoplesmap.net/project/botum ... wer-plant/

The plant will run on imported coal

I wonder whether they will eventually source the cheap, dirty coal from Indonesia or the premium stuff from Aust or even from Russia??

https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/featur ... countries/

^^ Interestingly, of the top 6 world producers the top 3 ie China, India and US are mainly for domestic consumption, leaving Indonesia, Australia and Russia as net exporters.

This is a sorry state of affairs. Don't ask them why they decide to destroy yet more green land. I guess it's because nobody lives there. But apparently, that isn't the case...

People do live there. ...

https://vodenglish.news/botum-sakor-res ... -shelters/

Anyway, there's been a big hole in the middle of Botum for years now. Take a look at Google Earth...

Cambodian conglomerate sparks conflict in Botum Sakor National Park
by Gerald Flynn & Meng Kroypunlok on 20 July 2023

For decades Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park has been carved up and the land handed out to companies as economic concessions, at the expense of the ecosystem and local communities.
In 2021, a massive swath of the park, including its densest expanse of forest, was handed over to the Royal Group, led by politically connected business tycoon Kith Meng.
While the companies developing the national park promised jobs, as well as homes with running water and electricity, and access to schools and health centers, none of this has materialized, affected residents say.
Royal Group’s presence, and the threat of more companies grabbing a piece of the park, has instead sparked disputes that residents acknowledge they’re likely to lose.

*Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

BOTUM SAKOR, Cambodia — “We’ve filed complaints with four institutions now — the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Land Management, and the Ministry of National Defense — but only the interior ministry has responded,” said Vichea*, a resident of Cambodia’s Thma Sa commune, who requested the name of his village not be published when interviewed in April 2022. “The local authorities tell [us] they will do something to help us but they don’t; anyone who stands up to protest these developments is accused of being an opposition activist.”

More than a year later, in May 2023, reporters caught up with Vichea again in Botum Sakor National Park. Spanning 182,342 hectares (450,577 acres) along the Gulf of Thailand in southwest Cambodia, Botum Sakor was once the country’s largest national park. But more than half of the park was sold off to private developers between 1998 and 2017, mostly to investors with ties to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). As of July 2023, just 18% of the park remains protected.

In 2008, the Cambodian government awarded Chinese developer Union Development Group, known locally as UDG, 36,000 hectares (89,000 acres) within the park’s boundaries, kicking off a series of land disputes that became increasingly desperate as they dragged on for more than a decade.

Despite the fallout, the government awarded UDG a further 9,100 hectares (22,500 acres) of the national park in 2011. Since then, Botum Sakor has been defined by conflicts over land brought about by ecologically harmful development projects.


This map shows how just 18% of Botum Sakor National Park remains protected, while the rest has been privatized, mostly for wealthy investors. Image by Gerald Flynn/Mongabay.

In March 2021, an estimated 30,064 hectares (74,290 acres), another 20% of the park, was reclassified by the government as community-use zones. While this was ostensibly done as part of an effort to relocate Cambodians affected by government decisions to hand huge swaths of land to concessionaires in the decade prior, it was swiftly abused across Koh Kong province by land brokers who appear to have been buying up land earmarked for communities on behalf of Defense Minister Tea Banh and his brother, Royal Cambodian Navy Admiral Tea Vinh.

But none of these developments were what prompted Vichea’s 2022 complaint. That was triggered by the Sept. 15, 2021, announcement in the government-issued Royal Gazette that handed over yet another parcel of land, this time to one of Cambodia’s biggest conglomerates: Royal Group.

Headed by Kith Meng, a longtime political ally of Prime Minister HE, Royal Group won an 8,631-hectare (21,328-acre) concession to build a special economic zone (SEZ) inside Botum Sakor National Park. Not only does Royal Group’s new concession see the company scoop up one of the last segments of intact forest, but combined with new developments, it leaves just 34,058 hectares (84,159 acres) of the park protected as more than 80% of the protected area has been handed out to concessionaires or reclassified to house those seeking to escape the development boom.
Full article: https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/cambo ... onal-park/

Government Gives 9,968 Hectares in Botum Sakor National Park to Royal Group
21 August 2023 4:26 PM
Runn Sreydeth
Phon Sothyroth

The 9,968 hectare concession granted in January to Royal Group in Botum Sakor National Park, alongside prior concessions. (Licadho)

Tycoon Kith Meng’s Royal Group company received 9,968 hectares inside Botum Sakor National park in Koh Kong province, according to a January 25 sub-decree signed by Prime Minister HE and published earlier this month.

It is the latest giveaway inside Botum Sakor National Park, where more than 60% of the original protected area has been privatized through concessions, according to data from human rights NGO Licadho. While Cambodia has technically had a moratorium since 2012 on economic land concessions (ELC) for industrial agriculture, there have been several large-scale concessions revealed this year alone, says Naly Pilorge, Licadho’s outreach director.

The Royal Group concession, granted through the Environment Ministry, is not officially classified as an ELC but the distinction is in name only, Piloge notes.

“Whether labeled an ELC or not, the thousands of hectares now being granted by the state to private actors risks fueling a new wave of land dispossession across the country,” Pilorge said.

Royal Group received 8,631 hectares to form a special economic zone inside the national park in 2021, which has led to deforestation and displacement of more than 100 families, a Mongabay investigation found.

Last month, it was revealed that Koh Kong Rubber, a company linked to Tycoon Ly Yong Phat’s son Ly Phoonrat, received 6,234 hectares inside Botum Sakor via a January sub decree.

As the Environment Ministry oversees a vast expansion of protected areas, Botum Sakor is one of a handful of downsized national parks. The 171,250 hectare park had 27,355 hectares removed, mostly overlapping with the Union Development Group’s 36,000 hectare 2008 concession.

Im Rachana, a spokesperson for the Agriculture Ministry, which oversees economic land concessions, said the moratorium on economic land concessions remained in effect even though the government awarded a 5,000 hectare economic land concession last year. Rachana directed questions about Royal Group’s concession to the Environment Ministry.

Environment Ministry spokesperson Neth Pheaktra and Koh Kong Governor Mithuna Poutong did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Ministry of Economy and Finance spokesperson Chhay Rattanak​ said he did not know what the Royal Group was doing in Botum Sakor and that the topic was not relevant to his ministry, though the sub-decree stated the concession was granted in “collaboration” with his ministry.
https://cambojanews.com/government-give ... yal-group/

Details on the latest carve-up of Botum Sakor.
New concession in Botum Sakor National Park handed to Cambodia’s Royal Group
by Gerald Flynn on 22 August 2023
Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park continues to be carved up and its ostensibly protected land awarded to private developers with close links to the country’s ruling party.
In the latest development, approved Jan. 25 but only announced Aug. 14, local conglomerate Royal Group was awarded a 9,968-hectare (24,631-acre) concession that adjoins another land parcel it received in the park in 2021.
This leaves Botum Sakor with 20,000 hectares (less than 50,000 acres) of land that’s not in private hands, or just one-ninth of its original area when it was declared a national park in 1993.
Civil society groups have expressed concern over the lack of transparency surrounding the new concessions being issued in Cambodia’s protected areas, especially when the recipients are tycoons with reputations for illegal logging, forced evictions and environmental destruction.

Aerial shot of Royal Group’s special economic zone (SEZ), Botum Sakor, Koh Kong, Cambodia, in June 2023. Image by Gerald Flynn/Mongabay.
Full Mongabay article: https://news.mongabay.com/2023/08/new-c ... yal-group/

Here is a great story about Botum Sakor "National Park" (...and this is exactly the kind of story the completely neutered local media is no longer allowed to produce) . . .

"The shadowy Chinese firm that owns chunks of Cambodia"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66851049

online image hosting

orichá wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 11:12 am Here is a great story about Botum Sakor "National Park" (...and this is exactly the kind of story the completely neutered local media is no longer allowed to produce) . . .

Good story by the BBC, but must say that local media has also been consistantly publishing information on the situation at Botum Sakor "National Park", such as the exploitation by Chinese developer Union Development Group, (known locally as UDG), and land concessions granted for development to Cambodia's Royal Group and others.
Even the Phnom Penh Post and the Khmer Times have published articles on this topic which were reposted on CEO. ie. See the top of this thread page: business-and-finance/royal-group-planni ... 41870.html