UNITED KINGDOM: Legal challenge to international student ban slapped on university

David Jobbins04 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

The UK university barred from teaching students from outside the European Union (EU) is to challenge the decision in court by the end of this week.

Professor Malcolm Gillies, vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University (LMU), told the BBC flagship Today programme on Tuesday that it was seeking to have the revocation of its Highly Trusted Status by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) stayed.

“Our analysis with leading immigration lawyers indicates this report of the UKBA is wrong in so many details,” Gillies said. “We have an obligation to go to court.”

Loss of Highly Trusted Status (HTS), under which universities are required to vet applicants from outside the EU to ensure they meet immigration requirements, means that up to 2,700 current LMU students face deportation if they cannot find an alternative university at which to continue their studies by the end of November.

Gillies told the BBC: “We fundamentally contest their claim that there is a systemic failure here.”

He accepted that the decision by the UKBA, announced on 30 August, had done “huge damage” to LMU.

It had also done “a lot of damage to the credibility of British higher education”.

LMU said that the evidence it provided to the UKBA clearly showed that “on file after file we were taking every reasonable measure we could to be compliant”. The UKBA claim that LMU did not address serious and systemic failings identified six months ago was “simply not true”.

It said its checks on international students for English language and educational ability not only met but exceeded the UKBA requirements in a number of key areas.

“The university's staff has been diligently performing stringent checks to try and ensure that all individuals who are studying at the university are legally entitled to do so.

"The UKBA has not provided any constructive advice to the sector on this matter, despite being asked to on numerous occasions.”

The university believes that its monitoring complies with the UKBA's guidance and accused UKBA officers of ignoring information that was made available to them when they conducted their audit.

“Despite our concerns, we cooperated and assisted them fully and tried to persuade them on a number of occasions to review evidence that we felt was relevant.”

LMU claimed that the UKBA's requirements had changed substantially at least 14 times in the past three years.

“We believe the university's approach to complying with this multitude of changes is of a standard that not only equates with practices adopted by the majority of other universities in the sector but in a number of key areas exceeds sector-wide practice.”

This week the powerful House of Commons public accounts committee criticised the UKBA for disrupting the student visa system with “poorly planned and ill thought-out” changes in the rules for overseas students.

As a result an extra 50,000 people abused the system, coming to Britain to work rather than study, it said.

The committee of MPs said in a report published on Monday that the UKBA had enforced new rules for overseas students in 2009 before controls were in place. The result was a "difficult and costly" three years as the agency tried to amend the rules to clamp down on abuse.

It is against this background that vice-chancellors have expressed concern at the decision to make LMU the first university to lose its HTS.

On the same day, Immigration Minister Damian Green told MPs: “The UKBA found systemic failures that meant that London Met had not been able to ensure the appropriate admission and tracking of students from abroad.”

Green said that two other unidentified universities had their licences to admit overseas students temporarily suspended after UKBA investigations, but added that both had resolved their problems and were no longer suspended.

On 30 August David Willetts, the universities minister, announced that a task force led by the Higher Education Funding Council for England – and which includes Universities UK, the UKBA and the National Union of Students – would start immediately to support affected students and enable genuine students to find another institution at which they could continue their studies in the UK.

A ‘clearing house’ set up by LMU will support students wishing to transfer from that university to an alternative education provider or institution. It is to operate from 17 September and will offer every LMU international undergraduate student affected by the revocation decision a course or courses to which they can apply.

The task force said after its second meeting on Wednesday that the courses offered would be comparable in cost and curriculum, and the providers will be quality assured so that students can be confident that their learning experience will continue to meet high standards.

Providers will be based in London wherever possible in order to minimise disruption to students’ accommodation and transport arrangements.

The start of the clearing house has been put back, however, because of LMU’s legal challenge to the revocation of HTS. If the university wins a stay, the revocation will be set aside pending a further hearing and the university will be able, and will want, to continue to teach its current international students.

But the task force acknowledged the risk that later legal hearings might lead to the re-imposition of the revocation, creating a risk that students could have their studies disrupted in the course of the academic year.

Therefore, if the revocation is set aside, the task force may seek a guarantee that students will be allowed to complete their programmes at LMU for the whole of the academic year 2012-13. Any decision then taken to confirm revocation would be implemented in full only from 1 August 2013.

But if the UKBA and the government cannot agree to that solution and the risk of in-year disruption persists, students will be given the option of moving to another institution.

The potential for wider damage to the UK's international student recruitment was illustrated on 31 August when City University found itself named as the UKBA's target in China due to the similarity of its and LMU's titles in Mandarin.

It was wrongly named, by the Chinese national broadcaster, as the university stripped of its trusted status.

City University said: We are aware there may be some confusion around the translation of City University. There are two universities which use this name in Mandarin Chinese – City University London and LMU."

It stated it retained its HTS, enabling it to recruit and teach students in the UK.
 

INDIA: Poor quality and too few seats push 600,00 students abroad

Alya Mishra09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

Inadequate higher education infrastructure and poor quality courses are pushing 600,000 Indian students to top universities overseas – and are costing the country around Rs950 billion (US$17 billion) in foreign exchange annually – a study has found.

The study, “Higher Education Scenario in India”, was conducted by the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India, or ASSOCHAM, and is yet to be published.

It found that most Indian students go abroad because they do not find seats in quality institutions within the country. The huge capacity constraint in quality higher education could be tackled through public-private partnership models, the study suggested.

Competing for too few seats

With an aspiring middle-class, the limited number of quality higher education institutions is failing dismally to meet demand.

In 2012, 500,000 students sat the entrance exam for 9,590 seats at Indian institutes of technology (IITs), India’s premier technical colleges. The Indian institutes of management (IIMs) received close to 200,000 applications for 15,500 seats.

Notably, in 2011 Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), one of the leading commerce colleges in the country, set a minimum marks cut-off for admission of 100% for students with science subjects. Anything less than a perfect score would disqualify an applicant.

The move outraged students and sparked debate about access and quality in higher education. According to the SRCC principal, PC Jain, the problem lies in the supply of and demand for higher education.

“The number of students who score 90% and above is increasing every year. But we have a limited number of seats. If everyone applies for SRCC then we have to find a way to limit the number,” said Jain.

“We need more quality higher education institutions since the number of students graduating from school with good performance is surging every year.”

In 1987, when a million students took grade 12 exams, SRCC had 800 seats. In 2011, 10.1 million students wrote grade 12 exams but the college had the same number of seats.

Struggling to achieve quality

Even if more seats were available, students who have experienced a foreign education said they would rather go abroad for the academic and cultural experiences, than study in India.

“Even average institutions in the US and UK are better than most colleges in India. Critical thinking, freedom to express your thoughts and to interact with faculty members, and inter-disciplinary studies is what distinguishes many foreign universities from their Indian counterparts,” said Shaleeni Chopra, a postgraduate of the University of Sussex in the UK.

According to experts, even if universities began strengthening the quality of education, it would be a very long time before the tide of students going abroad could be arrested.

“The role of universities is to produce knowledge, apply knowledge to research and build an academic culture,” said Professor MK Sridhar, member secretary and executive director of the Karnataka Knowledge Commission, a think-tank under the chief minister’s office.

“Unless universities re-orient themselves, embrace technology and open their doors to competitive research and faculty building, India will keep losing students and professionals to foreign universities, which provide students and teachers with a richer academic environment,” Sridhar said.

Caught in red tape

According to the ASSOCHAM study, higher education in India is subsidised enough by the government to attract students, provided that they gain admission to quality institutions.

“An IIT student pays an average US$150 monthly fee, while students opting for education in institutions in Australia, Canada, Singapore, the US and UK shell out US$1,500 to US$4,000 in fees every month,” said ASSOCHAM Secretary General DS Rawat.

“Demand for education loans has also been increasing by over 20% annually,” he said.

The paper suggested that India set up more quality institutions along the lines of IITs and IIMs to ease the outflow of students.

Notably, under the 11th Five Year Plan from 2007-12, the government announced the setting up of 51 publicly funded higher education institutions – including eight IITs and seven IIMs.

Most of the proposed institutions have been plagued by setbacks, including delays in land acquisition, shortages of qualified faculty and, in several cases, disputes between the central government and states.

Sriram Kelkar, an associate professor at the University of Hyderabad, said universities needed more autonomy in order to innovate and experiment, to attract students and achieve internationally competitive standards.

“Just providing funds for expansion is not the answer. Norms for hiring faculty need to be liberalised so that fresh talent can be brought in. The conventional teaching and grading systems need to be re-looked at and teachers need to be given more autonomy.

“Only then can we compete with our global counterparts,” Kelkar said.

UNITED STATES: Most university heads optimistic about future – Survey

The Chronicle of Higher Education 09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

US higher education administrators have mixed and even contradictory views about the financial future of their institutions. While the economy continues to recover at a sluggish pace, 57% of respondents in KPMG’s new Higher Education Outlook Survey said they expected their college to be in better financial shape in five years, writes Eric Kelderman for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

What the colleges represented in the survey did to survive the recession includes measures that have become standard parts of the higher education landscape. More than half raised tuition fees, 45% delayed capital projects, and more than a third offered more online classes and cut programmes with low enrolments. The survey also revealed the shifting priorities of higher education, with more than 60% of respondents saying that student retention and graduation would be a priority in the future. And more than 40% said their institutions would be focusing on online learning.

Full report on The Chronicle of Higher Education site
 

UNITED KINGDOM: Access chief warns elite universities over intake

Guardian09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

The government's university access tsar has warned Oxford and Cambridge that they risk losing their status as world-class universities if they fail to widen their entry to include more students from state schools, writes Peter Wilby for the Guardian.

In the first interview since his controversial appointment last spring Les Ebdon, who started work as the new head of the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) last Monday, told the Guardian: "If the top universities are to retain their positions, they need to access the full range of our society. Otherwise, they are losing a major source of potential."

Both Oxford and Cambridge take more than 40% of their entrants from fee-charging schools, which educate only 7% to 8% of children.

The government's selection of Ebdon was opposed by Conservative Party backbenchers who thought him a hardline advocate of ‘social engineering’. As vice-chancellor of Bedfordshire University, Ebdon recruited nearly all his students from state schools to study subjects such as journalism, sport and social work.

Full report on the Guardian site 

Harvard students fight cheating allegations

Bloomberg Businessweek09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

Harvard University students under investigation for cheating on a take-home government course exam said they’re waging a battle against the allegations, writes John Lauerman for Bloomberg Businessweek.

About 20 students and graduates have gone to the media to tell their side of the story, saying skipping classes, sharing notes and collaborating on tests were all tacitly condoned by the professor and teaching fellows of the course being probed. The probe involves about 125 students over cheating on a take-home exam for the course “Introduction to Congress”.

Harvard officials called it the biggest such probe in living memory. The students who are talking said they want to remain anonymous because of concern the accusations could affect their degrees or jobs taken since graduating. One 2012 graduate said losing his bachelor degree in economics might cost him his position at a Wall Street finance firm. 

Full report on the Bloomberg Businessweek site

 

Harvard University students under investigation for cheating on a take-home government course exam said they’re waging a battle against the allegations. 

About 20 students and graduates have gone to the media to tell their side of the story, saying skipping classes, sharing notes and collaborating on tests were all tacitly condoned by the professor and teaching fellows of the course being probed, students who took the class said.

The probe involves about 125 students over cheating on a take-home exam for the course, called Introduction to Congress. Harvard officials called it the biggest such probe in living memory. The students who are talking said they want to remain anonymous because of concern the accusations could affect their degrees or jobs taken since graduating. One 2012 graduate said losing his bachelor’s degree in economics might cost him his position at a Wall Street finance firm.
“Harvard went public with their version of the story, the version that looks good for the school,” a Harvard senior said. “We’re trying to present the other side.”

A Harvard e-mail to the 2012 graduate previewed his hearing before the Administrative Board, a college disciplinary body, for cheating on the final exam. The process of responding to a complaint to the board takes about two weeks, according to the letter.

‘Very Unfair’

“There was a tone set by the nature of the class and the professor teaching the course that collaboration was OK,” the graduate said in a telephone interview. “Dragging us into this investigation now, when we have financial obligations and jobs, seems very unfair.”

Harvard said last week that each of the students and graduates under investigation will be called before the Administrative Board. Students found to have cheated on exams can be asked to withdraw for two semesters, or may receive a warning or be put on probation, Jay Harris, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education, said in an interview last week. Some students may be exonerated, Harris said. He wouldn’t say whether the board would consider taking away graduates’ degrees.
No cases have been heard yet, Harris said. Officials declined to say which course the students were in because the board’s proceedings are confidential. Students and graduates are also prohibited from discussing their cases in public, he said.

Students said the course in question was “Introduction to Congress,” which had 279 enrolled in the semester ending in May. Freshmen through seniors were all represented in the class taught by Matthew Platt, an assistant professor. He declined to comment when reached by telephone last week and didn’t respond to a call yesterday.

Suspicious Similarities

Harvard is investigating whether the students inappropriately collaborated on the take-home exam, Harris said. A teaching fellow in the course noticed in May that many of the turned-in exams contained suspicious similarities, and an analysis of all the course’s exams led to the Administrative Board actions, he said.

“Academic integrity is very important at Harvard, as are fairness and due process,” Jeff Neal, a spokesman for Harvard said in an e-mail. “We expect to learn more about the way the course was organized and how work was approached in class and on the take-home final,” and the process will “take time and require patience,” he said.

Platt is known as a good lecturer who kept the course entertaining, said a senior who took the course and wanted to remain anonymous. The course is widely considered to be easy, the senior said.

‘120 A’s’

“Platt said, ‘I gave out 120 A’s last year and I’ll give out 120 A’s this year,”’ the senior said. “I’m taking a lot of difficult courses, so I take my A’s where I can get them.”

Platt said in class that he didn’t mind whether lectures were skipped, the students said. Students frequently shared lecture notes, which probably contributed to the similarities in people’s answers, those who took the course said.

“That’s how people understood this course worked,” the senior said.
Platt’s exam instructions say that “students may not discuss the exam with others -- this includes resident tutors, writing centers, etc.” That contradicts the way the course was actually conducted, students said.

Students consult Harvard’s Q guide to get previous course- takers’ reviews. Q guide reviews say that collaboration was accepted in Platt’s course, students said.

 

Ex-Harvard scientist found guilty of misconduct

The Boston Globe09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

Marc Hauser, a prolific scientist and popular psychology professor who resigned last summer from Harvard University, had fabricated data, manipulated results in multiple experiments, and incorrectly described how studies were conducted, according to the findings of a federal research oversight agency that were posted online on Wednesday, writes Carolyn Y Johnson for The Boston Globe.

The report details the problems that triggered a three-year university investigation that concluded in 2010 that Hauser, a star professor and public intellectual, had committed scientific misconduct. The document, which was to be published in the Federal Register last Thursday, lists six cases in which Hauser engaged in research misconduct in work supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Hauser agreed to a number of restrictions for three years, including a ban on serving as an advisor to the US Public Health Service, a requirement that any work he does with funding from that agency be supervised, and that an institution vouch for the validity of any such research.

Full report on The Boston Globe site

JAPAN: Universities adopt the hard sell for campus visits

The Asahi Shimbun09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

Interview coaching, a free lunch and discounted exam fees are some of the incentives Japan's institutions are offering as they try to attract applicants from the country's shrinking pool of 18-year-olds, writes Hiromi Oida for The Asahi Shimbun.

Universities are radically reviewing their summer campus visit programmes in order to lure as many prospective students as possible. "Competition among private universities has really intensified lately," said an official from Jissen Women's University in Tokyo, which offers eight ‘open house’ visit days a year.

Osaka University of Economics and Law pays 15,000 yen (US$192) to offset the journey costs of those travelling from distant islands such as Hokkaido and Okinawa. Those who take the shorter three-hour train ride from Tokyo can receive 7,000 yen. Hyogo University in Kakogawa, Hyogo Prefecture, slashes the cost of its 30,000 yen entrance exam by a third for applicants who visit a campus open day and complete a checklist of tasks, such as filling out a questionnaire. University officials say almost all visitors receive the discount.

Full report on The Asahi Shimbun site

Online universities blossom in Asia

KUALA LUMPUR: Thousands of kilometres from Kuala Lumpur in Cameroon, doctoral student Michael Nkwenti Ndongfack attends his Open University Malaysia classes online and hopes to defend his final thesis by Skype.

A government worker, Ndongfack could not find the instructional design and technology course he wanted in his own country, so is paying a foreign institution about $10,000 for the degree instead.
Online university education is expanding quickly in Asia, where growth in technology and Internet use is matched by a deep reverence for education.

“I chose e-learning because it is so flexible,” Ndongfack, 42, told AFP via Skype from his home in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde.

Web-based courses dramatically boost opportunities for students and are often cheaper than those offered by traditional bricks-and-mortar institutions.
But online learning has also caught the eye of some of the world’s most prestigious universities, with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently teaming up to offer free courses over the Internet.

“With the improvement in technology, the number of institutions offering online education has increased, both in terms of numbers and the kind of classes offered,” said Lee Hock Guan, senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

The Malaysian government said about 85,000 people took online courses in the country last year, both at web-based institutions and traditional universities offering Internet teaching.
In high-tech South Korea more than 112,000 students at 19 institutions are taking web-based classes, all of which have begun since 2002.

China embraced the concept of online learning in the late 1990s to expand access to education, particularly in its vast rural regions, and there are now scores of providers, with 1.64 million people enrolled in 2010.

A new type of learning
Online courses are changing the way students learn, educators say, placing less emphasis on the rote learning that has long characterised education in parts of Asia, and harnessing modern consumer technologies.

And “open” universities, which typically offer courses primarily through the Internet, allow anyone to enrol for online programmes regardless of prior qualification or degrees.
At Kuala Lumpur-based Asia e University, students download course materials from an online forum and virtual library. They are in contact with teachers and fellow students mostly through email, online chats, phone and text messages.

Assignments typically include illustrating what they have learned with videos and other presentations made with smartphones, iPads or other devices and uploading them to YouTube.
Academics say such interactive learning helps students engage with the material more than they would sitting passively in a lecture hall, and opens a window to learning through a medium they know and love – the latest gadgets.

“Everyone is a front-row student,” said Ishan Abeywardena, who teaches information technology at Wawasan Open University, based in northern Malaysia.
Students who might be too shy to ask questions or otherwise engage with their class in a traditional setting are much bolder online, Ishan said.

“Can you imagine the iPad, iPod and iPhone generation today, who are going to enter the university say, in 15 years’ time, going for a chalk-and-talk kind of model of learning? You learn by doing,” said Ansary Ahmed, Asia e University’s president.
But even those in favour of online learning admit face-to-face interaction – which can also help keep students motivated and personally engaged – is lost.

Ndongfack, whose web-only institution opened in 2000, said online studies were not easy, leaving him feeling isolated. “There is no one there to give you instant support,” he said.
The growth of online degree programmes is also constrained by poor Internet accessibility in parts of Asia and beyond.

More than 80 percent of South Koreans and 60 percent of Malaysians have online access, but in China the rate slips to about 40 percent and it slumps to around 10 percent in India.
Other criticisms include inadequate regulation, allegations of poor-quality teaching, student cheating, and the fact that online degrees are still not as widely recognised as traditional ones in the marketplace, say industry experts.

But Asia e University’s Ansary says such teething problems will be addressed over time, and in a few decades students will no longer attend just one university but several, picking and choosing from online offerings.

“These are early days,” he said. “The window is just opening.”

Soccer hits the streets of Battambang town

Thursday, 06 September 2012

Dan Riley

 

The jam-packed weekend of football action kicks off in Battambang town tomorrow afternoon as the 2012 SMART Street Football Tournament plays out over three days and six separate youth futsal seasons culminate in finals on a super Sunday of soccer supremacy. Competition organisers SALT Academy will set up two regulation futsal fields on the street near the riverside Naga Fountain to accommodate the contests.

Twenty-two adult teams have registered for the street football event, drawing players from Battambang, Pailin, Siem Reap and even as far as Phnom Penh. Pool games will start from tomorrow’s opening ceremony and continuing until Sunday morning. Quarterfinals and semifinals will bring the total of games to 60.

Sunday afternoon will feature a congested schedule of seven championship games. For the youth futsal competitions, the finals mark the end of a lengthy rainy season leagues.

Forty-one boys sides and 23 girls sides comprising players from 8 to 18 years old participated in weekly fixtures and practised twice a week with their coaches. Teams were bracketed into six age and gender divisions, with an U-11 Girls competition run for the first time.

The futsal season is a shorter version of SALT’s regular annual youth league campaign played on grass fields, which includes life skill lessons and positive community building activities. Last weekend saw exciting semifinal and third place playoff matches held at Battambang Airfield, with several games decided by penalty shootouts.

Organisers expressed their gratitude to main sponsors Smart Mobile for supporting the weekend’s festivities and providing awards for the winners.

---

Sunday’s Youth Futsal Finals
U17 Boys
Jerusalem v CFI

U14 Boys
DCC v Salaa Hope

U11 Boys
Aden v Jerusalem

Big Girls
Chrey v Chher Teal School

U14 Girls
Chrey v CFI

U11 Girls
Rapha v Khasch Poy School

To contact the reporter on this story: Dan Riley at dan.riley@phnompenhpost.com

Sung Bonna: Investing in the future of Cambodia

Thursday, 06 September 2012

Rupert Winchester

 

Sung Bonna is a man with plans. Not content with being one of the most powerful players in Cambodia’s property market, he wants to take his company regional, covering all aspects of the property business.

Talking to Post Property in his bustling offices in BKK1, the genial Bonna is softly-spoken, but his steely-eyed ambition quickly becomes apperent.

Starting from a small office space in 1999 with only a desk and an old motorbike, Bonna is now the president of the National Valuers’ Association of Cambodia and vice president of Real Estate Developers Association of Cambodia.

“At the moment we have business as property investors, developers, management and real estate and property agents and property valuation, so anything related to the property business, we cover. We develop residential, we develop offices, we develop commercial. We do it all,” he says proudly.

Over the years, Bonna has seen ups and downs in Cambodia’s property market, which he blames on inconsistent investment from overseas, which is now changing. “In 2006 and 2007, the investors were mostly Korean and Chinese. The Koreans were the main players. At the moment now things are going in a different direction. The Koreans are very slightly here. Most are Chinese, Vietnamese and Malaysian. Singaporeans and also the Japanese are coming as well at the moment this is a good sign that the Japanese are coming to Cambodia. But foreign investors now make up about 30 per cent of the total transactions, and 70 per cent are Cambodians.”

Bonna says that local investors are starting to look around the country and not just at Phnom Penh. “The local market is divided into two: one is the Cambodians from overseas, the second is Cambodian Cambodians  - the majority being real locals. They are starting to look at the provinces, and the other major cities, like Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, Battambang, and some of the Special Economic Zones near the borders with Siem Reap and Battambang.”

However Bonna says that Phnom Penh is still the best place for serious property investment: “After the crisis of 2008 and 2009 property prices dropped, almost 50 or 60 per cent in some locations across the whole country. In Phnom Penh is just fell by 30 or 40 per cent.”

He says that Phnom Penh has weathered the storm well, and is continuing to prosper. “Phnom Penh reached the bottom early, in 2010, and flattened out and started to be stable until 2011, but in the provinces it still continued to slide down and down until 2011. Those values are still flat, and some provinces are still down a little bit because the demand and supply isn’t there. But in general Phnom Penh is the best, especially in the city centre and areas where the government is,” he says.

“Starting from 2011,” he continues, “the number of transactions increased almost 20-30 per cent, and it makes the prices stable and pick up a little bit: comparing 2011 and now, we’ve just finished the first half of 2012, and year-on-year the number of transactions has almost doubled. But the prices have also increased, about 10 per cent on average. Especially in BKK1 and Daun Penh and along the main commercial boulevards.”

However, Bonna thinks some of the more visible stalled projects that dot the Phnom Penh skyline need to dealt with. “If there is a huge project in the middle of the city which is stuck, it makes other investors feel concerned. Sometimes they don’t think it’s a company’s internal problems, they think maybe its the country that has problems, so they think maybe the economy is not too good.   Sometimes, if possible, the ministry needs to keep an eye of supply and demand, and take care of investors.”

He rejects the idea that Phnom Penh could be facing another property bubble. “I don’t think with residential there will be a bubble, the buyers at this stage are not like the buyers before. The buyers at this stage are more concerned with real demand and real investment, not like the investors in 2006 and 2007,” he says.

With commercial and office space, he is slightly less sanguine. “There is some concern that there could be some oversupply in the future but in terms of the reality, it will be a challenge to stimulate demand … the market will find a solution. In the next three years, it’s not a concern. This is good for the country, it’s good for customers and good for demand, because of the competition.”

Bonna’s plans include listing his company on the Cambodia

Securities Exchange, the country’s nascent stock market. “Now I’m preparing the company, moving it, because it was at first a family company for the first five years, then the next five years it was a local entity, and now we’re aiming to become international so we’re changing a lot of our corporate governance policy, systems and structure, we are changing, and also our accounting and tax and everything, and we hope we’ll be ready by the end of next year or early in 2014.”

I ask him why he thinks listing would be useful for him, and what the company would do with the funds raised. “We are planning to invest in Cambodia. My personal nationalism means I would prefer to develop my country, and I would prefer to invest in this country. We want to expand the brand to cover the whole country, that’s what I’m planning, to be in every province, everywhere there will be a retail office.”

His plans of rolling out the brand nationally are already well underway: “We’ve already started, in Siahanoukville, and in Siem Reap, which is opening this week, and we’ll be in Battambang by the end of this year. We want to expand to make it easy for customers and for investors, so they can just walk in, and it looks like a retail bank.”

But Bonna’s plans extend overseas as well: “We want to jump in to ASEAN as a network, so we’re planning to open branches in ASEAN countries, Next year we’re planning to have one branch somewhere, my thinking is Myanmar, and Laos, and in Vietnam, trying to bring in investors into Cambodia. We want to list to get funds to expand overseas and encourage more investors to Cambodia.”

Bonna feels that this is a good time to invest in the Kingdom. “Cambodia still has a lot of advantages, interesting things, there are only some negative things in terms of its reputation, but its culture and environment has more or less changed a lot, it has developed a lot in terms of the law, regulations. We know that it hasn’t reached the levels that everyone needs yet, but at least it’s changing and there are still positive signs.”

He still feels that more changes are needed before the country becomes truly competitive, however.

“We hope that the government changes more things, especially as we’re preparing to join the ASEAN Free Trade Area, so to be competitive we have to change ourselves more: the most important is the law: regulation and enforcement and culture, so this is important, so I think we still need to change, compared to most other ASEAN countries, we have more potential, and we can attract investors from around the world to Cambodia.”

Bonna says that the country’s recent history has made it harder for it to compete internationally. “Cambodia is very young, in terms of the government, in terms of the private sector, education, experience, business, human resources, things like that, it’s very young. So it’s very hard. We’re not complaining about the government but we are complaining, I suppose, about the history of our country, so everything is difficult and it’s not easy to compete with other ASEAN countries.”

Finally, I bring up the subject of the Bonna Tower, a long-mooted project to build a grand office building in Phnom Penh. “At the moment we don’t have the budget or the funds,” he tells me,  “but this is our dream. As businessmen, if you don’t have a dream you cannot move, we have to build a dream to make ourselves move faster and forward to what we are dreaming, but we hope it will be coming.”