PHNOM PENH, March 31 (Xinhua)--A large group of thirty Thai rice millers and exporters met with Cambodian trades and investment officials here on Thursday in order to explore business opportunity amid ongoing border conflict between the two countries since the deadly clashes on Feb. 4-7 near the 11th century Preah Vihear temple.
The delegation led by Korbsook Iamsuri, president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association.
During a presentation to the delegation on Thursday, Cham Prasidh, Cambodian Minister of Commerce and vice chairman of the Council for the Development of Cambodia, said that the country produced 8.25 million tonnes of rice paddy for 2011. Of this figure, the country has 3.9 million tonnes of rice paddies, or 2.5 million tonnes of milled rice left over for exports this year.
So far, the country has 50,978 small rice mills and 1,789 medium and large scale mills.
“Now, our issue is the lack of hi-tech mills to process this rice paddy for exports,” he said. “We need investors in the sophisticated rice mills.”
Investment in rice mills in Cambodia, investors will take advantages of duty-frees offered by many countries in the world.
“It’s good for you all to do trades with Cambodia because if you set up rice mills here, the exportation of the processed rice to Canada, Australia, European countries…will be free-of-duty and no quota limitation,” he said.
Korbsook Iamsuri said that the group has really impressed with the chance to invest in rice mills in Cambodia as its geographical location is close to Thailand.
“We see that Cambodia has a huge potential in rice sector and there are a lot of rooms to invest in this sector,” she said. “It maybe now the best time for us to invest in Cambodia—we will take it into consideration when returning to Thailand.”
Chookiat Ophaswongse, honorary president of Thai Rice Exporters Association, recognized that Cambodia is really full of potential in rice sector, “but the lack of infrastructure, high cost of logistics, and expensive cost of electricity are still the factors discouraging investors to Cambodia.”
Cambodia needs 350 million U.S. dollars to boost rice paddy production and rice exports to hit one million tonnes a year from 2015, Hang Chuon Naron, secretary of state for the finance ministry, said Wednesday in the seminar on environment, agriculture and development.
Of this amount, 150 million U.S. dollars for building hi-tech post-harvest technology and other 200 million U.S. dollars for purchasing rice paddy for processing.
The visit of the Thai delegation was made amid the military confrontation between the two nations over the border dispute near Preah Vihear temple.
“Thai businessmen do business, not politics,” said Jiranan Wongmongkol, director of the Thai embassy’s Foreign Trade Promotion Office in Phnom Penh.
“If they observe good investment opportunity in Cambodia, they will grasp the chance regardless of political or border conflict,” she added.
Thai Rice Exporters Association was founded in 1918; so far it has 199 exporter-members.
Thailand is the world’s largest rice exporter, last year it had exported 9.3 million tones. (Written by Nguon Sovan)
No comments:
Post a Comment