Sinograin signs to purchase up to 200,000 tons of Cambodian rice per annum

  PHNOM PENH, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- China Grain Reserves Corporation (Sinograin) Guangzhou Branch on Tuesday signed to buy up to 200,000 tons of milled rice per year from Cambodia.
   The deal was signed between Xu Gefei, General Manager of Sinograin Guangzhou Branch, and Na Marady, president of Cambodia’s T.T.Y Corporation.
   Through the agreement, the Sinograin will provide capital to T.T.Y Corporation to buy processed rice from millers in order to export to China, said Na Marady.
   “Under the agreement, the Sinograin will buy up to 200,000 tons of rice from Cambodia in the first year,” he told reporters after the signing ceremony. “And, it will initially invest 20 million U.S. dollars in the T.T.Y Corp to buy rice from millers and if the work is going well, it will increase its investment with us up to 200 million U.S. dollars a year.”
   Cambodia produced up to 8.25 million tons of rice paddy in last year’s harvest season. Of this figure, the government announced that it has up to 2.5 million tons of milled rice left over for exports this year.
   Despite a great amount of rice left over for exports, the exports from Cambodia in the large quantity are still facing difficulties due to the rice storages are in different places across the country, it makes hard for exporters to collect it.
   “We will try our best to collect it and export it as much as possible to China,” he said.
   Xu Gefei said that Guangdong province has the estimated population of 100 million people and it needs about one million tons of milled rice per month.
   He added that the firm has studied about the quality of Cambodian rice for more than a year before it decided to reach the agreement with the T.T.Y Corp.
   “We observe that the quality is acceptable and we will buy all types of Cambodian rice,” he said. “The exports can start any time when the company has enough quantity to export-around 20,000 tons a month.”
   More Chinese investors have begun to look into Cambodia’s rice since Cambodia and China had signed rice export agreement in October last year in order to enable the exports of Cambodian rice to China.
   Cambodia hopes that through the deal, it would be able to achieve its self-imposed target of one-million-ton rice exports by 2015.