Cambodia will export 400,000 tonnes of dried cassava to the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region “from March 2022 to March 2023”, under a new agreement between the Ministry of Commerce and the southwestern Chinese region, according to the ministry.

The announcement was made during the signing ceremony of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on strengthening cooperation on trade promotion between the commerce ministry’s General Department of Trade Promotion and the Guangxi region’s Department of Commerce, hosted virtually by the ministry on February 24.

Cassava is one of Cambodia’s leading agro-industrial crops and an important export product of the Kingdom, making up an estimated three-to-four per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) per year, according to commerce minister Pan Sorasak.

In 2020, the Kingdom formally launched the National Policy on Cassava 2020-2025 in a bid to increase production and make the crop commercially viable for export to international markets.

At the signing ceremony, Sorasak expressed pleasure at the timing of China’s cassava purchase, saying that it demonstrates the country’s confidence in the product, even as the Cambodian government was still exploring the crop’s potential for international export, according to a February 24 statement from the ministry.

He also asked the Guangxi representatives to consider the possibility of encouraging Chinese companies to prepare further MoUs for the import of other Cambodian products such as milled rice, corn, mangoes and bananas to the region – as well as throughout mainland China.

“Bilateral trade cooperation between Cambodia and China has been continuously strengthened and expanded due to the visionary and cooperative leadership of the two countries’ top leaders,” he said.

The signing of various agreements in the last decade, including the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement, and the bilateral Cambodia-China Free Trade Agreement have all “paved the way for a strategic partnership” and boosted cooperation, economic and trade operations between the two countries, he added.

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Author: Hin Pisei

Source: The Phnom Penh Post

Publication date: 27 February 2022