CAMBODIA: Rubber processing plants being mulled

Japan may import rubber from Cambodia and investors from that country are considering building processing plants for the commodity in Cambodia, according to a senior official at the Agriculture Ministry.

Feasibility studies for the plants are being conducted, said Khann Samban, director of the ministry’s department of industrial crops. The statement follows a meeting in late-Feb. 2016 between Tatsuo Fujimura, president and representative director of JTC Corp., and Commerce Minister Sun Chanthol during which the executive said his company was studying the feasibility of importing rubber to Japan, while Chanthol encouraged Japanese investors to consider building processing plants in Cambodia.

“When we have factories to process… rubber for Japan, it will reduce informal exports to neighboring country and benefit to Cambodia by providing jobs and reducing poverty,” Samban said.

Rubber producer Lim Heng, chairman of Heng Mean Investment Co. Ltd., said exports to Japan were welcomed and would generate revenue for the national budget, but the products and their packaging would have to meet high quality standards. “If they build factories here and export to their country, it will help teach Cambodians about quality,” he said.

Heng added that Cambodian government should be calling for more investors to build factories in Cambodia to create a value-added services and generate more jobs. He said that with rubber growing on more than 300,000 hectares, a processing factory was the next step, as raw rubber was now being exported to Vietnam for processing.

Mey Kalyan, senior advisor to the Supreme National Economic Council, agreed that it would be a positive step for Japan to buy rubber from Cambodia but said he had some doubts that this would happen.

Japan imported products from Cambodia worth about USD 967 million last year – mostly garments and shoes – while it exported about USD 301.9 million worth of goods to Cambodia, according to figures from the Japan External Trade Organization.

Source: Daily “The Khmer Times”, Phnom Penh; 2 Mar 2016
(Syed Rashid Ali, Karachi, Pakistan)