Prime Minister Hun Sen will visit Vietnam next month to attract more investors to the Kingdom. This follows discussions held on Tuesday with Vietnamese Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh.

Hun Sen wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday that during a meeting with Minh at the capital’s Peace Palace, he would ask Vietnam to organise a Cambodia-Vietnam business forum during his visit there next month.

“Samdech Techo Hun Sen, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia, will request Vietnamese leaders to organise a Cambodia-Vietnam forum during Samdech’s visit to Vietnam in September, to mobilise Vietnamese investors to invest in Cambodia,” the post said.

Hun Sen did not announce the agenda for next month’s visit, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation spokesman Ket Sophan said on Wednesday that he could not comment on the trip in detail.

“The Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the two countries are now preparing for the visit because Samdech [Hun Sen] only decided to go yesterday,” he said.

Vietnam News reported on Tuesday that the country is one of Cambodia’s five biggest investors, having run 214 projects here worth over $3 billion.

It said that Vietnamese businesses contributed to economic development as well as social welfare in the Kingdom.

Vietnam’s investments in Cambodia focus mainly on agriculture, forestry, energy, minerals and mining, oil and gas exploration, finance, insurance and banking and aviation and telecommunications. But critics said some Vietnamese investments have harmed the country’s natural resources and led to land disputes and other issues.

Affiliated Network for Social Accountability executive director San Chey said Hun Sen’s willingness to accept investors was generally positive, but he noted that Vietnamese and Chinese investors often brought their workforces.

There were also concerns, he said, over human rights violations and illegal logging.

Chey said economic land concessions (ELCs] have been used as a pretext to cut timber in forests. And to avoid this, he said the government should open ELCs to bidding and choose investors based on who will be most beneficial to Cambodia.

“The government could easily place conditions on foreign investors such as only using the local workforce. We don’t seem to be aware of any bidding process. Most of them [foreign investors] make a request to the government and the government responds – so bidding would be a new option,” Chey said.

The Post was unable to contact Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries spokesman Srey Vuthy or Ministry of Economy and Finance spokesman Koem Sopheak.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan said the government only accepts investors who respect the law and Cambodia’s national interests.

“We follow the laws we have. No, we don’t discriminate against anyone  . . . whether they are foreigners or not,” he said.

Minh began his three-day visit to Cambodia on Monday, and on Tuesday and Wednesday co-chaired the 17th meeting of the Cambodia-Vietnam Joint Commission for Economic, Cultural, Scientific and Technological Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

At the meeting, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Prak Sokhonn told Minh that exchanges and summits between the two nations’ leaders, both in bilateral talks and at regional and international forums, were a solid basis for maintaining and fostering unbreakable relationships.