Chief Cambodia Holding, a Hong Kong-based brokerage firm, started its operations in Phnom Penh yesterday. The company aims to strengthen Cambodian agricultural products, a company official said.
The company reserved $100 million investment capital to connect domestic agricultural producers to the market, Director of Chief Cambodia Holding Te Tea Sieng said. ... continue
Srekor village has stood on the banks of the Se San River in northeastern Cambodia for generations. In a few years it will be gone, submerged along with more than 300 square kilometres of surrounding farmland and forest. …
For 37-year-old rice farmer Pa Tou, the future looks bleak. The relocation site set aside for them is wholly unsuitable, he complains. There is no irrigation, it is miles from the river and the ground is either rocky or covered with trees. And at this stage it has no schools, no health clinics, no pagodas and no roads. …
International Rivers, a campaigning NGO, predicts the Lower Se San 2 Dam “will have a costly, catastrophic impact on the Mekong River’s fisheries and biodiversity”. …
But media reports consistently show the government favors projects like hydropower dams and coal-fired power stations. More are likely to go ahead. On May 9, the Cambodia Daily newspaper said two more planned dams on the 3S network had been deemed economically feasible, moving them a step closer to approval. One would be a 370MW dam on the Se San River; the other a 100MW dam on the Sre Pok River. The first would flood 40 villages alone.
Meanwhile the Cambodian government has plans to build a hydropower dam on its stretch of the Se Kong River, which rises in Laos. Baran says that would block the region’s third fish highway, leaving the Mekong mainstream as the sole route for migratory species, further harming fish stocks. The rush to hydropower risks inflicting profound and irreversible damage to many more people than the residents of Srekor village.
Cambodian lawmakers have passed a new law on agriculture, but critics say the law does not go far enough to protect the country’s farmers.
The law passed on Thursday evening, but not before debate at the National Assembly. …
During the debate opposition representatives called on the Cambodian government to stop providing land concessions to private companies—either for economic or “social” aims. So-called social land concessions are supposed to go toward the poor. But opposition lawmakers warn that they too can be abused by private companies. …
[Opposition Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker] Yim Sovann also said the government should create a fund of $100 million to protect rice farmers against price fluctuations. That money could come from revenues on casino tariffs, he said. …
Chan Sarun, a CPP government representative, told the Assembly that a $100-million fund is not possible. And he said the government has already banned land concessions, since May 2012. Some 50,000 hectares have been saved from private development since the ban, he said.
In fact, watchdog and rights groups have said many concession deals have continued, despite an announced ban by Prime Minister Hun Sen in May 2012.
While significant obstacles remain, the success of the rice sector is a potentially crucial driver in Cambodia’s prosperous and equitable development. …
Cambodia announced two major bilateral trade agreements recently, with the Philippines and Thailand, that are expected to further expand the country’s rice export sector. …
Agriculture, led by rice farming, contributes to roughly a third of the country’s GDP and has immense potential for strengthening Cambodia’s economic growth, accelerating poverty reduction, and improving the living standard of its citizens. As part of this agenda, in 2010, the RGC adopted a new Policy Paper on Paddy Production and Rice Export, better known as the Rice Policy, to promote diversification of Cambodia’s economic sectors by catalyzing growth in paddy rice production and milled rice export to match the growth seen in the garment and service sectors. …
If Cambodia’s rice export sector were to reach its full potential, it could produce 3 million tons of milled rice, with the total export value amounting to $2.1 billion (approximately 20% of the GDP) and an estimated additional $600 million (approximately 5% of the GDP) to the national economy. It would also boost employment and income for agricultural farmers who make up more than 70 percent of the population living in rural areas. …
Poor transport and infrastructure such as roads, railways, warehouses, and handling equipment also increase costs for farmers. …
The lack of handling equipment in one of the main ports, the Sihanoukville Port, is also a major constraint for the export of large quantities of milled rice. …
As a relatively new player in the milled rice market, Cambodia faces a steep learning curve. However, with a surplus of 3.5 million tons of paddy rice (equivalent to 2 million tons of milled rice), Cambodia has the potential to soon be among the top five milled rice exporters in the world.
Major financial institutions show more trust in providing loans to the agricultural sector, evidenced by increasing agricultural loan disbursement, thanks to potential growth in the sector and better preparation of financial report among borrowers, according to industry insiders.
Acleda Bank, Cambodia’s largest domestically owned bank, has been increasing its percentage share of its loan portfolio into agriculture from 15 per cent two years ago to 19 per cent at the end of March.
While the bank’s total loan portfolio reached about $1.35 billion at the end of March this year, In Channy, the bank’s president and chief executive said $254 million was given to agricultural loans, which represents about 19 per cent of total lending. …
Acleda Bank, Cambodia’s largest domestically owned bank, has been increasing its percentage share of its loan portfolio into agriculture from 15 per cent two years ago to 19 per cent at the end of March. …
Kim Savuth, the president of the Federation of Cambodian Rice Exporters agreed that accessing loans from banks and MFIs is easier compared to some previous years.
Nevertheless, he said farmers still suffer because of higher interest rates offered by micro lenders, while strict requirements from banks were still a barrier for rice millers.
Milled rice exports have seen dramatic growth this year as the sector begins to take advantage of duty-free exports to European countries, an official and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.
Thon Virak, director of state-owned rice exporter Green Trade, said Tuesday that in the year up to the end of April, 118,500 tons of milled rice had been exported from Cambodia.
“It increased by about 43 percent compared with the same period [last year],” Mr. Virak said.
Cambodia traditionally exports a large proportion of its rice crop as unprocessed paddy to Thailand and Vietnam, where it is milled and often re-exported. The government has targeted an increase to 1 million tons a year-compared with only about 200,000 tons last year-by 2015, and investment in rice mills has been stepped up to meet the goal. …
“The agriculture sector today is still playing significant role in promoting local production growth, job creation, and contributing to the poverty reduction of the people. At the same time, the agriculture sector will continue the basic role for economic growth and socio-economic development in Cambodia in the coming decades although Cambodia has diversified her economy, including industrialization”, Samdech Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia said last week. …
“The growth in agricultural sector is not only improving our economy but also transforming the red dry land to become the green area in all seasons, as well as allowing our youths in rural area to be employed, reducing migration, and improving their livelihood.”
According to the report made by H.E Chan Sarun, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the agriculture sector has grown in average about 4.3% in 2012, in which the rice production was about 3 million hectares, and the land of 2.98 million hectares could be cultivated, and the average yield per year in both dry and rainy seasons is 3.117 tons per hectares. …
“We have also expected that this poverty rate will further decline to under 19% in 2013. In the future, we will try our best to drag down the poverty rate until the elimination of the poverty through the continued development of agriculture and economic diversification.” …
To impose no land tax is like helping them right in the field. For example, they need to spend one or two hundred thousand Riel per hectare as tax. “When we do not charge tax from them, they could use the money for something else, like purchasing a bicycle for their kids or other agricultural utensils.” …
BANGKOK: Demand for farmland may strip the Greater Mekong region of a third of its remaining forest cover over the next two decades without swift government action, a leading conservation group warned Thursday.
Forests are being cleared for commodities such as rubber and rice while illegal logging is decimating many protected zones, WWF said in a report, adding a contentious dam on Mekong river will deepen already severe ecosystem damage.
“The Greater Mekong is at a crossroads,” said Peter Cutter of the WFF, adding Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar lost between 22-24 percent of their forests from 1973 — the first point of available data — to 2009, while 43 percent of woodland was stripped from Thailand and Vietnam. …
The US$3.8 billion hydroelectric project, which is due to be completed in around five years, has sharply divided the four Mekong nations — Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. …
Cambodia announced two major bilateral trade agreements last month, with the Philippines and Thailand, that are expected to further expand the country’s rice export sector. Over the last few years, Cambodia has emerged as a major rice exporter in the region, due in large part to the Royal Government of Cambodia’s recent expansion of its agricultural sector. …
Agriculture, led by rice farming, contributes to roughly a third of the country’s GDP and has immense potential for strengthening Cambodia’s economic growth, accelerating poverty reduction, and improving the living standard of its citizens. As part of this agenda, in 2010, the RGC adopted a new Policy Paper on Paddy Production and Rice Export, better known as the Rice Policy, to promote diversification of Cambodia’s economic sectors by catalyzing growth in paddy rice production and milled rice export to match the growth seen in the garment and service sectors. In his keynote address at the policy’s launch, Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen said: “The policy aims to ensure that we grab the rare opportunity to develop Cambodia in the post global financial and economic cataclysm.” …
Poor transport and infrastructure such as roads, railways, warehouses, and handling equipment also increase costs for farmers. To transport one ton of rice on a 100 km road, Cambodian farmers must spend $15, while their counterparts in Thailand and Vietnam pay $4 and $7.50, respectively. The lack of handling equipment in one of the main ports, the Sihanouk-Ville Port, is also a major constraint for the export of large quantities of milled rice. In addition, lack of access to and high cost of credit decreases domestic economic value-added and hinders milled rice export, presenting an obstacle for rice millers to stockpile paddy rice. …
Jarai minority villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district protested in two locations yesterday against a Vietnamese company that community leaders say has been clearing their protected land and forcing villagers to accept inadequate compensation.
Community leader Sev Hem said 30 angry villagers directly confronted five Company 72 workers and their bulldozers in Yatung commune’s Ten village yesterday. …
Villagers and local rights group Adhoc claim Company 72 had forced 10 families in Ten village to give their thumbprints to an agreement accepting $200 per hectare in compensation. …
After the fourth Joint Trade Commission (JTC) recently, Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom said that Thailand and Cambodia had the potential to drive two-way trade up by 30 per cent, due to strong growth in 2012.
Last year, bilateral trade grew by 40.5 per cent year on year, from US$2.86 billion (Bt84 billion) in 2011 to $4.03 billion in 2012. To drive growth, the two countries will also strengthen cooperation on trade and investment in other sectors, ready for the opening of the Asean Economic Community in 2015. …
Moreover, under an initiative called the Greater mekong Sub-region Cross-Border Transport Agreement, the two nations will provide public transport between the border town of Aranyaprathet and Cambodia’s Poipet. It is hoped the move will lead to a growth in logistics and trade between the two countries and improve immigration procedures for travellers, including an electronic passport identification system.
TOEK CHHOU DISTRICT, Kampot province – A donor-backed project launched here on Saturday aims to produce Cambodia’s first export-quality sea salt and invigorate the struggling local salt industry.
In a ceremony among Kampot’s vast fields of coastal saltpans and low levees, company representatives from Asia Salt (Cambodia) Co., Ltd. inaugurated a $2.9 million venture, which hopes to produce 20,000 tons of salt each year for export.
Asia Salt (Cambodia) Co., Ltd- a local subsidiary of a joint venture between South Korean Company EEE Korea and InfraCo Asia Development Pte. Ltd.-is financed by the British, Swiss and Australian governments.
The first shipment of salt bound for South Korea is expected to leave between July and September. InfraCo’s non-executive director Peter Bird said the project would employ 350 local people on a 120-hectare salt farm. …
“We are conserving about 30 acres [about 12 hectares] of coastal mangrove for coastline protection and we’re maintaining an ecological zone,” he [Peter Bird] added. …
According to Um Chhun, secretary of the Kep-Kampot Salt Producers Community, the region has about 4,500 hectares of salt farms, together producing 80,000 tons of salt last year- a low yield due to heavy rains.
“The quality of Cambodian salt is still low compared to neighboring countries, Thailand and Vietnam, so we can’t export. We sell it locally,” he said. Mr Chhun said it would be difficult for producers to move up to modern techniques which are costly to implement.
“It’s very expensive. For just 1 square meter it costs $7,” he said. …
Farmers can expect better rice paddy yields this year compared to last year after the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology yesterday predicted that the rainy season would run from mid-May until November with only a short dry spell. …
Chhomg Sopal, agriculture development cooperative officer with the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture said that farmers should see high yields if the ministry’s rainy season prediction is correct. …
To enhance Cambodian rice yields, the government should encourage private development of rice-seed production and focus its efforts on farmers’ education and regulations that ensure the quality of seed, industry experts say.
The Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), under the direction of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (MAFF) is the main source of high-quality seeds for distribution to Cambodian farmers.
According to David Van, deputy secretary-general of the Alliance of Rice Producers and Exporters of Cambodia, MAFF does not have the resources to supply enough high-quality seed. …
Farmers in Kompong Chhnang province locked in a land dispute with a local businesswoman are waiting for the government to make a decision on who owns the property after student volunteers measured the area earlier this month as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide land-titling program.
A team of student volunteers measured the 45 hectares of rice and cashew fields claimed by 76 families in Rolea Ba’ier district’s Kraing Leav commune on April 2 and 3. At the request of local businesswoman Moul Engly, the volunteers then measured the same area again on April 4. …
In his letter clarifying the role of the student volunteers in the land dispute, Mr. [Por] Vannith, the volunteers’ provincial coordinator, addressed a Supreme Court decision from 2010 involving a criminal case Ms. Engly had brought against eight local farmers for allegedly occupying her land illegally, and damaging her property.
While the Supreme Court ruled that eight villagers were not guilty of the allegations levelled by Ms.Engly, as had the Appeal Court before it, Mr. Vannith said the decision made by the Supreme Court had not settled the question of ownership to the land. …
Hundreds of indigenous minorities in Ratanakkiri province are being made worse off by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme which, rather than securing their property rights, is contributing to the loss of their ancestral lands, according to a new report.
The report supports complaints aired since last year by minority communities in the country’s northeast that the prime minister’s land-titling initiative, known as Directive 01 and launched in June, is depriving them of their rights to communal land titles.
Produced by seven organizations, including the Community Legal Education Center and the Center for Study and Development in Agriculture, the authors of the report surveyed 79 villagers in Ratanakkiri province where indigenous communities had started the application process for communal titles.
The survey found that 26 of those communities, or roughly 1 in 3, had all or parts of their land demarcated for private land titles under Directive 01, and 25 of those 26 communities were disappointed with the project and the private titles on offer.
“One of the their most common reasons for dissatisfaction was because the policy did not secure their communal land, and in fact caused them to lose more land,” the report says. …
Besides jeopardizing their traditional farming practices and very ways of life, Mr. [Chhay] Thy [Adhoc's Provincial Investigator] said, indigenous families were worried about making ends meet without their communal lands and on the low salaries offered at rubber plantations. …
Thailand will forge closer ties with Cambodia and other neighbouring countries to increase competency in rice trading and boost the bargaining power of Asean countries by setting up a rice-trading zone soon.
Also, Thailand will expand crop cooperation to cassava to raise farm incomes in the region. …
Thailand will help Cambodia promote its cassava under the same concept of rice trading. It will help encourage more trading of cereals, such as cassava and maize, by promoting contract farming to ensure stable incomes for farmers.
The JTC will discuss a strategy to promote bilateral trade with an emphasis on cross-border shipments, which account for 65 per cent of two-way trade value. …
Last year, two-way trade was valued at US$4.03 billion (Bt116 billion), or 0.84 per cent of Thailand’s total trade. Exports to Cambodia were worth $3.78 billion against only $249.5 million for imports from that country. …
Cambodia’s first-ever agricultural census is under way, tasked with addressing the lack of reliable statistical information on one of the Kingdom’s most crucial economic sectors. …
The census is being taken by the government with assistance from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in two rounds. The first round runs through May 31. After the July elections, the second round will commence in August and run through September. …
According to FAO Cambodia, in the first round of the census, an estimated 2.7 million households engaged in agricultural activities will be identified. In the second, five per cent of these households will be interviewed about their agricultural activities, before experts eventually examine the data. …
An unusual report shows that organic rice buyers in the U.S. are getting a large percentage of their rice from Cambodia.
The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC) exported 114 tonnes of organic jasmine rice to the U.S. in the first quarter of this year, a 30 per cent increase compared with the same period last year, reports the Phnom Penh Post. …
During the first three months, CEDAC exported 59 tonnes of organic jasmine brown rice and 55 tonnes organic jasmine white rice to the US.
Experts suggest that Cambodia has the potential to become an important organic rice producing country in Southeast Asia. Srey Chanthy, an independent agricultural analyst, told the Post that compared with most Asian countries, Cambodian farmers use relatively few chemicals on their fields. …
Just recently, the Philippines government signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on rice trade with the Kingdom of Cambodia to pave the way for the National Food Authority (NFA) to import rice from that country for the next two years.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) revealed that the MOA between the two governments was signed last April 4 by Philippine Ambassador to Cambodia Noe Wong and Cambodian Senior Minister and Minister of Commerce Cham Prasidh. …
The MOA opens the way for the NFA to import rice from Cambodia through Green Trade, a Cambodian public enterprise. …
Cambodia’s success in rice farming can be attributed in large part to the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC), founded by Yang Saing Koma in 1997.
A key aspect of CEDAC’s success is the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), which Koma introduced to just a handful of farmers in 2000. Simply put, SRI is effective plant-water-soil management that combines all farming good practices. …
