The Ministry of Commerce has recognized forty advisory members of the Phnom Penh Chamber of Commerce, in a proclamation that lists each appointee and sets out no powers for the role.
The document, numbered 0477 MOC.AMD.BK and carrying the chamber’s reference 375, was signed by Commerce Minister Cham Nimul on 4 June 2026 and posted by the chamber the following day on the official Facebook page of the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce. Its first article lists the forty by name and honorific, the roster carrying the Oknha and Neak Oknha titles commonly associated with Cambodia’s senior business tier, among them Pung Kheav Se, In Channy, Lu Meng, and Kouch Mengly. Its remaining two articles void any contrary provision and assign the ministry’s directorates to carry out the recognition.
Beyond the recognition and the roster, the text sets out no consultation procedure, no meeting schedule, no vote, no conflict-of-interest rule, and no interface with the foreign chambers or the small-business sector. The act arrived in the same week that international chambers operating in Cambodia pressed the country’s principal government-business forum to sharpen those mechanisms.
The forum, the Government-Private Sector Forum, has run since the late 1990s as Cambodia’s standing channel between investors and the state, organized into sixteen working groups and coordinated by the Council for the Development of Cambodia as its secretariat, according to the forum’s published description. By the forum’s twenty-fifth-anniversary account in late 2025, reported by Cambodia Investment Review, ninety-three percent of the measures agreed at its nineteenth plenary had been implemented, with a twentieth plenary anticipated in 2026. The same outlet identified Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chanthol, first vice-chairman of the development council, as chair of the forum’s coordinating committee. Khmer Times has reported that the twentieth plenary will run on new digital infrastructure funded by Australia, built around a public tracking dashboard.
On 4 June, the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia hosted its second Public-Private Sector Breakfast Briefing at the Hyatt Regency in Phnom Penh. Cambodia Investment Review reported that the briefing ran under the development council’s direction, that AmCham had surveyed seven international chambers beforehand, that none of the twenty-four reforms put to them drew opposition, and that the chambers favoured strengthening the existing framework rather than replacing it. The same report placed the consensus around closer coordination among the business chambers, the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, government agencies, and the forum’s working groups, with earlier consultation on regulations affecting investment among the priorities raised.
The Cambodia Chamber of Commerce answered the same day. In a public statement reported by Cambodia Investment Review, the chamber defended its role as a secretariat within the forum and called for an inclusive reform process.
The proposals concern how the forum is coordinated, work that sits with the development council as secretariat and with the national Cambodia Chamber of Commerce on the private-sector side. The proclamation concerns advisers to the Phnom Penh chamber, the capital-level body the document traces to Cambodia’s 1995 law on the chamber of commerce and a 1995 sub-decree establishing it. The Phnom Penh chamber sits one tier below the national chamber, whose membership, Khmer Times has reported, is composed of the presidents of the capital and the provincial chambers, eighteen in all. The only visible institutional bridge between the two bodies is a single office-holder. The Phnom Penh Post has reported that Kith Meng, chairman of the Royal Group, has led both chambers since 2005 and was returned to both seats in January 2023, taking the capital chamber by 39 of 40 votes and the national chamber by 15 of 18, the national presidency decided by the presidents of the capital and provincial chambers. That overlap is institutional, and on its own it establishes no link between the recognition and the reform proposals. Khmer Times has also reported that Kith Meng serves as the private sector’s high-level co-chair, a coordination role inside the mechanism the international chambers want tightened.
The recognition lands at a particular point in the chamber’s own term. The proclamation is issued for the fourth mandate, second term, the same term whose elected members the ministry recognized by sub-decree on 3 July 2023, a document the proclamation cites as part of its legal basis. The advisory roster follows those elected members by nearly three years.
What the available record does not settle is why the advisory layer is recognized now. The proclamation carries no preamble tying it to the forum, and no public account dates the selection of the forty advisers. The documents establish a narrower set of facts: a ministerial act adding forty prominent names to the capital chamber, signed in the same week that international chambers were pressing for the forum’s coordination to be tightened and the chamber’s national umbrella was defending its coordinating role. Whether the recognition answers the forum discussion, follows a calendar fixed earlier, or coincides with both, the public material leaves open.
Cambodia is scheduled to graduate from least-developed-country status in 2029, the point at which several of the trade preferences its export sectors rely on begin to phase out, and foreign chambers have framed their forum proposals against that horizon. The European Chamber of Commerce set out that agenda in its White Book in May, pressing for faster movement on tax, trade, energy, and digital reform before that date.
Forty prominent business figures now hold a formal recognition from the Commerce Ministry, attached to the capital’s chamber of commerce, and the proclamation granting it says nothing about what that recognition lets them do.