Cambodia hopes to export 200,000 tons of rice in 2011

[RFA]

The Cambodian government is confident that Cambodia can export up to 200,000 tons of rice this year after the EU has allowed tariff exemptions on rice exports from Cambodia to its markets.

Mr. Kong Putheara, director of department of Statistics and Commercial Information of Finance Ministry, said Cambodian rice is now very popular with European consumers. He said besides Europe, Cambodia has got orders from some Asian countries such as the populous countries of China, Malaysia and The Philippines which is the world's largest rice importer.

Reports from Ministry of Commerce's CamControl indicates that in the first 4 months of this year, Cambodia had exported 42,669 tons of rice. This is a substantial increase from last year's exports, which had only exported 50,000 tons of rice for the whole year.

Cambodia hopes to export 1.5 millions tons of rice per year by 2015.