Cambodia has a total of 2,125 operational factories by the end of 2023, an increase of 7.21 percent compared to 2022, an official report pointed out on Tuesday.

The report by the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation showed that by 2023, 241 new factories were opened and 98 factories were closed.

Factories operating nationwide have a total investment capital of US$18.56 billion, up 11.24 percent from 2022, it said.

The value of factories’ production volume was US$16.36 billion last year, an increase of US$531 million, or 3.35 percent compared to a year earlier, it added.

The industrial sector contributed about 7.7 percent to the economic growth in 2023, said H.E. Hem Vandy, Minister of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation.

‘For 2024, the industrial sector is projected to continue to grow at around 8.5 percent due to the expected recovery of the garment sub-sector while the non-garment manufacturing sub-sector continues to maintain strong growth,’ he underlined at an annual mee
ting held on Feb. 20.

Garment, footwear and travel goods industry is the largest foreign exchange earner for Cambodia. The sector currently consists of roughly 1,300 factories and branches, employing nearly 900,000 workers, mostly female.

Source: Agence Kampuchea Presse

SUWON, South Korea, An appellate court upheld a 10-year prison term for a mother charged with killing her son because she was unsure if she could raise him well, court records showed Tuesday.

The mother in her 40s was indicted for choking her 5-year-old son to death while he was asleep at an apartment bedroom in Gyeonggi Province in March last year.

The woman told investigators she killed the son because she felt unsure if she could raise him well after his kindergarten told her the previous day that he is aggressive, violent and inattentive. She said she had also planned to commit suicide, but ended up killing the son only.

The district court sentenced her to 10 years in prison after taking into consideration the fact that she had suffered from depression.

Prosecutors appealed the verdict on grounds the sentence is too light, but the Suwon High Court upheld the lower court’s decision, saying all key factors have already been taken into account in the lower court’s ruling.

Source: Yonhap News Agency