Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Cambodia Boosts Milled Rice Product’s Export To The Middle East

Cambodian Commerce Minister, Cham Prasidh, said on November 6 that Cambodia is trying to boost the exporting of milled rice products to Saudi Arabia that has expressed a desire and reveals a high demand for the milled rice market to supply to other countries in the gulf region.

The announcement was made after his return from Dubai, where he met on talks of bilateral cooperation with Saudi Arabia’s foreign trade minister and attended the milled rice forum there. Cambodia also dispatched its milled rice products division and involved companies to join the rice forum in Dubai. He noted that Dubai is the biggest place for milled rice distribution in the Middle East.

The business of the milled rice product in Dubai is valued at about $1.4 billion dollars, partnering with other countries in the gulf region. We need to look at the Middle East in order to expand milled rice production there. “Saudi Arabic Foreign trade minister will pay a visit to Cambodia early in 2012 to expand bilateral cooperation and discuss the milled rice trade with Cambodia,” the minister stressed.

Cambodia has a surplus in the amount of 2.4 million tons of milled rice products in 2011 that could allow the country to export the product to foreign markets. “Therefore, Dubai will be a big market for our product,” he added. Even the flood that has devastated the kingdom in Southeast Asia, 10 per cent of total rice paddies have been affected this year. Cambodia needs about one billion US dollars to finance the buying of milled rice products from local farmers as the government plans to export the milled rice products at a rate of one million tons by 2015. Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are involved in talks to expand milled rice investment and trade with Cambodia.

Source: The Southeast Asia Weekly, November 13-19, 2011, Vol. 5, Issue 46, Page 3

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