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According to the Bloomberg Innovation Index 2020, Germany is the most innovative nation of the world. After six years on top position, South Korea was ranked second followed by Singapore, Switzerland and Sweden. Germany scored three top-five rankings in value-added manufacturing, high-tech density, and patent activity. Altogether, the index in its eighth year, encompasses dozens of criteria that contribute to seven indicators.

Rhenus Cambodia recently participated in river cleaning efforts spearheaded by the Belgium organization River Clean Up. The mission of this group is to host cleanups along rivers, create awareness and bring change to something which Rhenus can relate to, having been named after a river itself.

Completed in the rivers of Mekong, the local Rhenus team and other volunteers gathered waste like plastic bags, bottles and food wrappers along the riverbank. Together, the activists collected 430 kgs of plastic trash in less than an hour. “Protect the planet, don’t use single use plastic, don’t litter”, Frank Kleinteich, Rhenus Country Director Cambodia, wrote on Facebook. Altogether, Rhenus enabled ten cleanups with over 6,000 people during Water Festival in Phnom Penh in November. All in all, this collective initiative was able to clean several tons of trash off of the rivers and banks to be recycled or disposed of properly.

On the occasion of the visit of Heinrich Böll Foundation’s President Ms. Barbara Unmüßig to Cambodia in December, the foundation launched the Plastic Atlas booklet in English and Khmer language at Meta House Phnom Penh. The Plastic Atlas contains more than 49 detailed infographics covering a broad range of topics regarding the plastic pollution crisis looking along the entire value chain of plastic. The event was also attended by H.E. Neth Pheaktra, Secretary of State and Spokesperson of the Ministry of Environment, who delivered a speech on plastic pollution in Cambodia.

In September 2018, the German Business Group (ADW) and EuroCham Cambodia signed a memorandum of understanding with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) to establish a Business & Cooperation Desk in Cambodia. Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), it is part of the Global Business Network (GBN) Programme and provides information, advice and guidance to support local, German and other European businesses and institutions which engage in development cooperation. Further tasks are to facilitate access to development cooperation programmes, organise a dialogue between development cooperation and the German private sector, and to identify business opportunities.

A lack of knowledge about the Cambodian economy and its huge potential for investors, traders and producers can no longer be an excuse for German companies. With the new directory in German language published by ADW, GIZ and GTAI, readers get a brief overview about general political and economic conditions as well as valuable insights from several business sectors. But this is by far not the only helpful publication worth considering before starting business operations in Cambodia.

Two agreements worth more than €67 million, about $70 million, were reached by Minister of Economy and Finance Aun Pornmoniroth and German ambassador Christian Berger on 28 November. These are the first loans the Federal Republic provides to the Kingdom. According to a press statement, the loans are directed towards improving the government’s four priority sectors – human resources, road infrastructure, energy and water.

In line with Cambodia’s national long-term economic and energy ambitions and during the Clean Energy Week Cambodia, the German Business Group Cambodia (ADW) and EuroCham welcomed a delegation of German businesses involved in industrial and commercial solar who was visiting Cambodia in order to explore business opportunities on 4 November 2019.

The prevalence of unlicensed foreign vessels operating in Cambodian waters as well as the practice of vessels trading catches at sea rather than at port has become such a problem that in 2015 the EU restricted the import of fisheries products from Cambodia. Consequently, in August 2019 Minister of Agriculture H.E. Veng Sokhon announced that every fishing boat in the country will be tracked with EU-funded support by 2023. German company Weatherdock AG offers technologies related to real-time tracking of ships and boats; its tracking systems provide detailed position reports of objects in a “closed user group” in real time via AIS technology.

September went on, October went on… and most people seem to miss something that has become a custom even in Phnom Penh for years: typical German food, cold beer, original music from Bavaria, and a lot of fun. Thanks goodness, the waiting comes to a near end as Oktoberfest 2019 opens the gate at Hops Craft Beer Garden next week.

In Berlin, official celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall started on Monday. On 9 November 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced that all citizens of Eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR) could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany unified within one year while it also symbolizes the end of the Cold War.