More than 800 street vendors and drivers of taxis, tuk-tuks and motorcycles working the border area between Banteay Meanchey province and Thailand yesterday marched through Poipet City calling for an end to the rampant corruption being carried out by border officials. ...
Migrant workers who cross the border daily have had... continue
A delegation from a Thai agricultural co-operative yesterday discussed means of improving agricultural products and market access with representatives of the Ministry of Commerce in Phnom Penh.
Kamit Likhitvidhayavuth of the Thai co-operative said his team aimed to strengthen market access for Cambodian goods. …
No agreement was signed yesterday, but both sides said they share a common goal of boosting economic activities along the countries’ borders. …
Malaysia-based Harta Packaging Industries Sdn Bhd opened a new Cambodian factory to meet the demands of a growing exports sector and benefit from Sihanoukville port’s ambitious expansion plans, officials said.
Harta Packaging, a wholly owned subsidiary of HPI Resources Berhad and part of the Oji Paper Group of Japan, is aiming for a $9 million turnover for its recently opened Cambodian factory by December, according to group general manager Chang Kee Soon. …
Lou Kim Chhun, Sihanoukville Autonomous Port’s chief executive, said yesterday the port currently has plans for an $85 million expansion. He said it would be too early to give further details, however. …
The Department of Foreign Trade plans to set up a “rice trade zone” project in the East to process Cambodian rice for export to other countries.
Tikhumporn Natvaratat, deputy director-general of the department, said his organisation plans to implement the project in Chanthaburi, Trat, Sa Kaeo and Chachoengsao provinces. …
The department will also decide on the types of rice that Thailand would import from Cambodia to process for export to other countries, with paddy and brown rice among the options being considered.
“If Thailand exports the rice to the European Union, it may benefit from the privileges under the Generalised System of Preferences that the EU offers to Cambodia because the origin of the rice is Cambodia,” Mr. Tikhumporn said. …
[Mr. Tikhumporn] said Thailand might initially import 100-1,000 tonnes of rice from Cambodia for the export project. …
Cambodia’s import and export trade volume had amounted to US$2.7-B in the 1st 2 months of this year, up 28% compared to the US$2.1-B in the same period last year, the statistics of the Commerce Ministry showed Friday.
Main products Cambodia imported are garment and textile raw materials, petroleum, construction materials, automobiles and motorcycles, consuming items, food and soft drinks, pharmaceutical products and cosmetics, while it exported garments and footwear, rubber latex, milled rice, corn and cassava. …
Local instant noodle company Men Sarun failed in its plan to export canned noodles to US markets this year, and an official confirmed that failures stemmed from both the unstable market price and increasing costs of transportation.
Choun Kol, deputy general director of Men Sarun Investment, told the Post that the export plans were temporarily suspended, though producing machines have already been imported but not yet been installed.
According to information he received from his business partners in the US, the cost of transportation has increased to around $6,000 per container in recent months, from about $4,000 earlier in the year. The move stemmed from increasing gas prices. …
Local food producer Ly Ly Food Industry had invested about $1 million for a Chinese-made machine to improve production and food quality as it prepared for the coming regional economic community, the company’s owner said yesterday.
Keo Mom said a tremendous amount of goods from neighbouring countries would flow into the Cambodian market in 2015, when the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is scheduled to be launched.
She said her company had imported the machine to increase efficiency. …
Meng Saktheara, director-general of the General Department of Industry at the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy, said many Cambodian-made products were superior in quality to imported goods. …
CAMBODIA needs greater diversification of its exports – especially in the agricultural sector – in order to achieve sustainable economic growth, a senior official said yesterday.
Economy and Finance Minister Keat Chhon raised the issue during the annual meeting of the Ministry of Commerce. …
Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh said that as well as garments and shoes, Cambodia exported a large of number of bicycles, produced in special economic zones. …
Ministry of Commerce figures show Cambodia’s total trade volume was $13.4 billion last year. Exports accounted for $5.5 billion of this figure.
Unions and labour rights groups have spent recent months unashamedly drilling home a stark reminder: Cambodia’s minimum garment wage, at $61 per month, compares poorly with those in Thailand – where workers earn more than $200 a month – and Vietnam, which has a base wage of $110 in some areas.
One country deliberately left out of these comparisons is Myanmar, where, according to different sources, the minimum wage for garment workers languishes between $28 and $40 a month.
With the lifting of sanctions opening up what was long regarded a pariah state, stakeholders in Myanmar’s garment industry are expecting an explosion as Western investors seek to cash in on the opportunities such conditions spawn. …
Vong Sovann, deputy secretary-general of the Ministry of Social Affairs’ strike resolution committee, told the Post that the government was strongly considering how an emerging garment sector in Myanmar might affect Cambodia’s billion-dollar industry, which provides about 85 per cent of the country’s exports and employment for 400,000-plus workers. …
When a contingent from Stanford Law School in the US visited Cambodia last month, Stephan Sonnenberg, a clinical lecturer from its International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, said global brands were well placed to vacate a country quickly if they found a better option elsewhere.
“They can threaten to [leave Cambodia], and they have a global distribution network that’s engineered very specifically to be able to do that at very short notice,” he said.
To what extent brands, vendors and factories in Cambodia are willing to leave the country is something Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, is keeping a close eye on. …
Yim Serey Vathanak, a trade unions national project co-ordinator for the International Labour Organization, believes established investors in Cambodia might be reluctant to start fresh somewhere else without major incentives to do so.
“Some brands race to the bottom and don’t want to be responsible for working conditions,” he said. “Maybe some [investors] are willing to move because their production here is small . . . but for those who want to keep their reputation, there isn’t much difference in leaving Cambodia for lower wages.”
Threats of such a migration, at this point, are a “red herring”, according to Dave Welsh, American Center for International Labour Solidarity country manager. “Brands are not yet showing signs that they support a Burmese industry,” he said, adding that a minimum wage of about $40, “to the extent that it exists” in an economy that’s not formalised, would rise as inflationary pressures took effect. …
Dotted with rice fields flanked by palm trees, Cambodia’s southeastern province of Kampong Speu is nothing short of picturesque.
But behind the idyllic exterior is an on-going struggle to turn this region’s natural beauty into a global attraction and improve the lot of poor local farmers, as the neighbouring beachside Kampot province did just three years ago.
Back in 2009, Kampot became to Cambodia what Champagne is to France – a region bestowed with the prestigious Geographical Indication (GI) status, which ensures a higher market value for specialty produce. …
Here in Kampot, farmers supplying European gourmets with what is lauded as the best pepper in the world enjoy a higher daily wage than their counterparts in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, 30 percent of whom live on less than a dollar a day. …
Sun Somnang of the export company Starling Farm and a member of both the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association (KPPA) and the Kampong Speu Palm Sugar Promotion Association (KPSA) believes there is an urgent need to publicise palm sugar and attract tourists.
Experts like Somnang and government officials seek to improve farmers’ lives in Kampong Speu, where the average gross annual income is 500 to 1,000 dollars. …
Cambodia’s footwear industry has experienced significant growth over the past five years, with the number of factories doubling, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce. Meanwhile, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has announced it will monitor and report on footwear factories.
As of November, 45 factories exported footwear with a combined value of $268.7 million, according to estimates of the Ministry of Commerce. …
A lack of trade financing – the loans and guarantees needed to support import and export transactions – for international deals within developing Asian countries such as Cambodia is restricting opportunities for growth, a survey by the Asia Development Bank (ADB) has found.
Of 106 banks surveyed, those within developing Asian economies had rejected $425 billion of a potential $2.1 trillion requested in trade finance in 2011. …
ADB deputy country director Peter Brimble said trade finance is critical in supporting the export transactions of Cambodian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which do not have access to financing from parent companies abroad. …
Cambodian-based SME-development consultant Lun Yeng said that SMEs would need support from government and multi-national development banks to assist with the capital needed to acquire funding. …
Brimble said Cambodian exporters are not used to accessing trade finance, while Cambodian banks often perceive it as too risky to lend.
In partnership with ACLEDA Bank, the ADB fills trade finance gaps by providing guarantees or loans themselves.
Thanks to seasonal demand, the price of rubber has increased from 2012’s year-end prices. But it was still slightly lower than at this time last year, a rubber-plantation owner said yesterday.
Mak Kimhong, president of the Cambodia Rubber Association and owner of the Chhop Rubber Plantation in Kampong Cham province, told the Post dried rubber prices had increased from about $2,700 a tonne in November and December to $3,100 a tonne this month. …
In 2012, Cambodia exported 54,000 tonnes of dried rubber, up 16.6 per cent from 46,700 tonnes in 2011.
The total value of 2012 exports, however, dropped 21.2 per cent to $158 million from $201 million in 2011, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. …
Siamese Rosewood, which is illegally logged and exported from Cambodia in large quantities, will be protected internally as a threatened species following a decision taken in Bangkok yesterday.
A meeting of the 177 countries party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) voted unanimously to protect Dalbergia Cochinchinensis, or Siamese rosewood, according to a statement from U.K.-based organization, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).
The move sees Siamese rosewood added to CITES’s Appendix II, which lists species that are not necessarily threatened with extinction, but may become so if trade is not controlled. The decision means that a specific export license has to be granted to internationally trade the timber. …
Chinese customs recorded about 6,850 cubic meters of luxury wood logs—thought to be largely made up of rosewood— as having come from Cambodia in 2012. …
The USDA increased its rice export forecasts for India, Cambodia and the U.S. mainly due to higher production estimates in these countries.
Cambodia’s 2013 rice export estimates was increased 150,000 tons to a record 975,000 tons, up about 21% from last year, said the USDA in its March Rice Outlook. However, it also added that the “bulk of Cambodia’s rice exports are shipped to Vietnam and Thailand,” duggesting the figure reflects unofficial sales. The forecast for rice production for Cambodia has been raised by 375,000 tons to a record 4.6 million tons based on larger area (2.95 million hectares) and a record yield. …
Cambodia’s waterways are significantly under-used for the transport of commodities such as rice, and enhanced infrastructure and a review of government fees is needed at the Kingdom’s ports to make exports more competitive, industry experts say.
According to figures from the Alliance of Rice Producers and Exporters of Cambodia (ARPEC), Vietnam’s rice millers, located largely on estuaries, primarily use waterways for transport at an average cost of $3 a tonne. By comparison, local rice millers rely on trucking to transport rice, at an average cost of $15 to $17 a tonne. …
The production of animal feed may be lucrative for family-run businesses, but production is failing to meet the local market’s demand, said industry experts.
Ros Limhy, National Agriculture adviser for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ Tonle Sap Poverty Reduction and Smallholder Development project, and animal welfare and production specialist, said that despite a growing number of local livestock companies, most feeds in Cambodia are imported and costs are higher than local production costs. …
The Ministry of Commerce and bank officials announced yesterday that they will hold a meeting next month aimed at better facilitating rice millers’ access to credit.
The move is part of the Asian Development Bank’s Climate Resilient Rice Commercialization Sector Development program to address food security and rice commercialisation, funded with a US$55,000 Asian Development Fund loan.
Mao Thora, secretary of state at the Ministry of Commerce, told the Post millers will see additional loans if they can demonstrate a sufficient level of stocked paddy rice. …
ADB plans to strengthen the rice value chain, improve legal and regulatory framework in agricultural land management, and enhance paddy production through improved irrigation efficiency as well as establishing post-harvesting facilities and crop insurance pilots.
Cambodia economic growth was 7.3 percent in 2012. …
Agriculture grew by 4.3 percent, crops by 4.9 percent, fisheries by 6.7 percent, industry by 9.2 percent, garment [sector] by 6.9 percent and the service industry by 8.1 percent, said Dr Hang Chuon Naron, Secretary of State for the Ministry of Finance of Cambodia. …
Moreover, gross domestic product per capita increased from 760 US dollars in 2008 to nearly 1,000 US dollars in 2012, with a projection of $1080 in 2013, he stresses [sic]. …
Cambodia’s rice export reached almost 180,000 tons in 2011 and 187,000 tons in 2012 of which more than 8 percent was exported to the EU. …
During the first 11 months of 2012, rubber exports increased by 23.9 percent … although value decreased by 19 percent down from a total of $181.1 million to $146.7 million.
In 2012, tourist arrivals increased by 24.4 percent to reach over 3.5 million from 2.88 million in 2011. …
Garment exports increased by 17.4 percent from $4.2 billion in 2011 to $5 billion in 2012. …
In 2012 … some 1980 construction projects worth $1.6 billion were approved. … The increase in the number of projects [displays] a steady recovery of the real estate sector, Mr Naron adds.
He also said [tax revenue] is estimated to increase by 27 percent to 2, 5 01 reil ($625 million) in 2012. …
Microfinance has experienced rapid growth over the last five years, reaching 1.3 million borrowers and 1.1 savers in 24 provinces. …
Cambodia’s trade volume reached $12.4 billion in 2012 while Cambodia’s export was worth 5.58 billion in 2012 [Dr. Hang Chuon Naron stated].
Cambodian crocodile farmers prefer selling young live crocodiles directly rather than raising crocodiles and selling their skins for export as they believe there is no market, despite officials encouraging crocodile farming for skin exports.
Heng Chheng, a crocodile farmer from Battambang, has raised crocodiles since 1984. He said this year he planned to hatch about 10,000 young crocodiles, which would produce around 9,000 babies. …
