More than 1,000 Chinese investors and businessmen will soon come to Cambodia to seek investment partnerships with their Cambodian counterparts during the inaugural International Agriculture Products and Expository conference on Koh Pich Island.

The inaugural event is set for June 25 to 28 and expo organizer Bridget Lau, president of the US-International Federation for Supporting Small and Medium Enterprises, said 800 Chinese companies from 30 provinces in China will bring more than 8,000 pieces of agriculture equipment to showcase in Cambodia.

“Through this expo, we want the world to know about the Cambodian agriculture sector,” she said yesterday during a press briefing on the upcoming conference. “We strongly hope that Cambodian agricultural products will have more market access to the globe after the expo.”

“Cambodia has a wide range of agricultural products, so we are calling for Chinese investors to invest and purchase agriculture products from Cambodia,” Ms. Lau added, noting that companies from Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam are also attending.

Lim Heng, vice president of the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, said that through this expo, more and more Chinese companies will partner with Cambodian companies to produce and process agricultural products to export to China and other countries.

“We don’t want to bring goods from China to sell in the Cambodian market; we want to have factories here to produce and process agricultural products for export,” he said.

Mao Minea, director of the department of agricultural extension at the Ministry of Agriculture, said the government supports the expo, just as it supports the sector.

He said the government has strategies to develop and boost the agriculture sector by building a 14.5-meter deep-sea port, lowering the electricity tariff, and developing airports for transportation.

Mr Minea added that Cambodia exported about 257,637 tonnes of rice in the first five months of 2017, up 10 percent compared to the first five months of 2016.

The government has also set up a taskforce to monitor commodity prices to protect people’s living standards, he said.

Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak will lead the taskforce with officials from relevant departments in the ministry.

The taskforce will study and collect data related to production, cost and supply chain capacity, including the commodity price of prioritised products such as rice, fish, chicken, pork, gas, diesel and cassava.

Source: Khmer Times. Date: 2017-06-22