Cambodia’s rice exports see sharp rise in last 6 months

Cambodia has seen 369% rise in processed rice exports in 1-H of this year, compared to the same period last year, showed the statistics from the Ministry of Commerce’s Camcontrol Department Thursday.

From January to June 2011, the country had exported 80,442 tonnes of milled rice to European markets and other countries, up 369% from 17,144 tonnes at the same period last year, while the export value jumped to US$45.7M, 241% up from US$13.4M.

Khuon Savuth, Chief of the Camcontrol Department’s statistics division, said the sharp rise was due to the tax exception for Cambodian rice by the European countries and Cambodia’s improvement of processed rice quality.

“In addition, drought and flood in some European countries also leads to increasing demand of rice from Cambodia,” he added.

Cambodia has 3.9 million tonnes of rice paddies, in equivalent to 2.5 million tonnes of milled rice, left over for exports this year, according to the government report.

However, this country can export only the small amount of its milled rice due to the lack of sophisticated post-harvesting technology.

The country needs roughly US$350M to invest in hi-tech post harvest technology and to purchase rice paddies from farmers for processing in order to achieve its self-imposed target of 1-Million-Ton rice exports by Y 2015.

Paul A. Ebeling

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