Cambodian rice is except to export to United Arab Emirates at the end of this year after the Cambodia’s rice exporters participate into Rice International Conference and Exhibition (RICE) 2011, which held on November, 3-5, 2011 in Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“There are at least 15 Cambodian rice exporters and producers from four big companies in Cambodia planning to attend rice exhibition in Dubai. It is a good opportunity for Cambodia to display Cambodian rice products in order to seek for market as well as investors to invest in Cambodia rice field for export to UAE,” Senior Minister H.E. Cham Prasidh, Minister of Commerce, said in a press conference on September 5th at Ministry of Commerce.
“UAE could be a main potential market for Cambodian rice in the future after EU and China while Cambodia used to exporting rice to Africa at amount of around 240 tons a year,” he said.
“The expo will help the Middle East to know about Cambodian rice products and we expect to find some business from UAE this year.” It is the first time for Cambodia to go to UAE to study their market and seek for rice export. “I hope that next year, there will have a lot of Cambodian companies seeking for more market there.”
Mr. Faisal Ali Mousa, Chairman of the Ideal Idea Events of RICE said, United Arab Emirates is a re-exported rice country. “In 2009, United Arab Emirates spent around US$ 15 billion to buy rice from 52 countries around the world, but there is nothing Cambodia,” he said. “This exhibition will allow Cambodia to display Cambodian rice and seek to market rice in Middle East.”
The expo will be jointly by many countries around the world such as Italy, Pakistan, Brazil, Thailand, Vietnam, Agentina, and India. After the expo, the minister expects to sign contact or agreement with UAE while Arab business people and investors are looking for new investment and products.
“I believe this exhibition will be a very good platform for Cambodia’s exporter, producer and businessman to see our investors to exchange information then raise agreement,” Mr. Mousa stressed. “Cambodia’s rice is good quality and in high demand, but it went to Thailand and Vietnam under their name, so it needs proper marketing and need more capital with new cultivating technology to make exporting to UAE more sustainable.”
“While UAE as re-export area, process million tons of rice, the area is very active in exportation,” he mentioned.
He hoped that next year, there will be a big number of Cambodian rice exporter to join RICE exhibition.
In the first semester of the year, the Cambodia rice export volume reached US$ 45.6 million and about 100,000 tons of milled rice product were export. The government of Cambodia plan to achieve paddy surplus of more than 4 million tons of rice products and export around 1 million tons of rice products by 2015 as stated in the government’s policy.
In Cambodia, agriculture is a major sector to Cambodia’s socio-economic development, which contributes nearly 33 percent to the GDP of the country. 85 percent of the population lives in rural areas and agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for the rural poor while paddy production represents the important of food sector in country
They planted rice paddy for over 2.3 million hectares in country. Nowadays, Cambodia has over 3,000 kinds of paddy with the stability and less dependence on natural changes because of the advances in irrigation scheme and application of agricultural technologies.
In the last decade, Cambodia has been successful with rice production which producing 7.58 million tons in 2009, of which the country has another surplus of about 3.5 million tons for export. Cambodia’s rice cultivated area could be expanded up to 3.5 million hectares from 2.6 million hectares of cultivated land. The country is trying to boost the potential of the harvest of 12.25 million tons of rice.
The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has planned a number of programs and activities to increase rice production to make Cambodia one of the major rice exporting countries in the near future. But the climate is the core thing as most the rice fields are still dependent on rainfall from nature. To address the climate change problem, Cambodia needs to increase its adaptive capacity to climate change and develop more climate resiliency programs.
Source: The Southeast Asia Weekly, September 11-17, 2011, Vol. Issue 37, Page 3
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