From showcasing a successful fried-banana vendor to trumpeting the benefits of recycling car tires, Cambodia's first business TV show is breaking fresh ground.
Business Edge, a half-hour magazine-style show broadcast weekly, is catering to the growing number of small and medium-sized businesses in Cambodia helping the economy revive after decades of conflict that ended only in 1998.
PHOTO: AFP
The program, which kicked off a year-long series in September and is likely to extend into a second season, fills a gap on Cambodian TV, squeezed between glitzy variety shows, melodramatic soap operas and dry political commentary.
"This is the first and only program ever shown in Cambodia to provide people with both basic and in-depth information on the Cambodian business situation," ministry of commerce secretary of state Sok Siphana said.
"More business people are turning to it for business advice and students too, for practical examples of the theory they've learned in school," he added.
The program explores challenges faced by businesses anywhere, but with a Cambodian slant.
Topics covered so far include securing finances, pain-free office relocation, the plus-es of recycling, including car tires, and building loyalty among employees.
Producer Dim Sovannarum said the show was blazing a unique trail in Cambodia.
"Our production is different from Chinese drama series, game shows and so on and we mainly focus on only three elements: information, information and more information," he said.
Filming the show presents peculiarly Cambodian challen-ges, with some otherwise feisty entrepreneurs declining to appear for fear of being kidnapped after having their success advertised, or being extorted, Dim said.
Kidnappings are rare in the kingdom, but the wariness is probably a legacy of the years of violence here, including the 1970s regime of the Khmer Rouge, when all private enterprise was suspended and even money abolished.
Shyness is another obstacle to overcome.
"That's typical of Cambodian people," Dim said.
Chhim Vannak, the owner of a now booming fried-banana shop in downtown Phnom Penh that began as a humble street stall in 1994, has starred on the show and says he is picking up a few pointers himself from tuning in.
"I have watched about 20 episodes so far.
They teach and explain how to run a successful business," he told AFP, adding that he had learned to focus more on quality and service, while he has also decided against raising prices.
The show is funded by the Mekong Private Sector Development Facility (MPDF), itself backed by an array of international donors and which aims at boosting growth of small and medium businesses in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam as a way of firing up their economies.
The MPDF's Lili Sisombat said the show's idea was hatched in 2001 when they were brainstorming how to spread business news in Cambodia, a mainly agricultural country where a third of the population survives on less than a dollar a day.
"Cambodian people here were just not reading enough ... and there were no radio channels professional enough to broadcast this kind of program," she said, adding that television was the obvious next choice.
Media giant CNBC was also called in to provide advice on international angles for some segments of the program, which is broadcast across five of Cambodia's 24 provinces and municipalities to an estimated 15,000 viewers.
The commerce ministry's Sok Siphana hopes that the show may help give Cambodian businesses an edge as they face up to stiffer competition when the kingdom accedes to the World Trade Organization within the next few months.
"The WTO will open the international market for Cambodia, but if Cambodian people do not understand business it will be very difficult," he warned.
CHIPMAKING INVESTMENT: J.W. Kuo told legislators that Department of Investment Review approval would be needed were Washington to seek a TSMC board seat Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said he received information about a possible US government investment in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and an assessment of the possible effect on the firm requires further discussion. If the US were to invest in TSMC, the plan would need to be reviewed by the Department of Investment Review, Kuo told reporters ahead of a hearing of the legislature’s Economics Committee. Kuo’s remarks came after US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said that the US government is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
RSS