Monday, May 23, 2011

Cambodian, Thai trades up 36 pct in Q1 despite border row [-So much for Hun Xen's suggestion of boycotting Thai products!]

May 23, 2011
Xinhua

The bilateral trade volume between Cambodia and Thailand is still on the rise in spite of recent deadly clashes between the two countries'troops over the border conflict, statistics showed on Sunday.

Total bilateral trades mounted to 716 million U.S. dollars in the first three months, up 36 percent from 527 million U.S. dollars at the same period last year, according to the statistics provided by Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh on Sunday.

Cambodia's export to Thailand was 55 million U.S. dollars, up 139 percent from 23 million U.S. dollars, while Thailand's export to Cambodia worth 661 million U.S. dollars, up 31 percent from 504 million U.S. dollars.

According to the statistics, Thailand's exports to Cambodia include petroleum, processed goods, consumer products, construction materials, fruits, vegetables and cosmetics, while Cambodia primarily ships agricultural products, second hand garments, recyclable metal, and fishing products.


Jiranan Wongmongkol, director of Foreign Trade Promotion Office at Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh, said the rise is due to mutual trust between Cambodian and Thai businesspeople and Cambodians' faith on Thai products.

"We still see a sharp rise in bilateral trade exchange from January to March this year despite there was a border fight in February," she told Xinhua by telephone on Sunday. "We expect the rise trend continues throughout the year."

Cambodian commerce officials agreed that the sporadic border clashes have slight impacts on trade activities.

"Trade is for profit, when merchants think it is profitable they still do," said Chan Nora, a secretary of state for the commerce ministry.

Cambodian and Thai border has never been completely demarcated. The conflict has occurred just a week after Cambodia's Preah Vihear temple was enlisted as World Heritage Site on July 7, 2008.

So far in this year, two major deadly clashes had occurred. One was on Feb. 4 to 7 at Preah Vihear temple and the other was from April 22-May 3 at Ta Mon temple and Ta Krabei temple in Oddar Meanchey province, leaving dozens of both sides' soldiers and civilians killed and tens of thousands of locals fled home for safe shelters.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

why does cambodian need to import goods that can be grown in the country? ex: fruits and vegetables. Cambodian are capable to grow their own stuffs!

Anonymous said...

9:39 AM,

You have made a very good observation!

Growing fruits and vegetables should have been something the Cambodians can do better and therefore exporting them to other countries.

It is indeed sad that Cambodians cannot even grow enough fruits and vegetables to satisfy their own domestic demands after all, Cambodians went through the period of the Killing Fields where everyone was supposedly farmers.

The trade imbalance with Thailand is so huge that Cambodia will take a long time or even forever to catch up with Thailand.

Anet Khmer

Anonymous said...

there's nothing to be proud of with siem product in cambodia, really! siem is so stupid to pick a fight with cambodia. their products are becoming less and less preferred by khmer people, you know if they keep on stealing from cambodia again, you know!

Anonymous said...

reason y khmer can't produce enough agricultural production is because too many land grabbing from farmers for stupid rich businesses that's not even benefiting the farmers directly.

Anonymous said...

12;30am,you `re right.in Cambodia right now,we don`t have any more land to plant any fruits,at lease we have to destroy all Cpp big villages out side the city.some lands `s just empty and only the gates around them for nothing!.What`s the PHD of CPP`s party?.