[PHNOM PENH POST]
State-owned Rural Development Bank (RDB) has loaned a domestic cassava
processor and exporter US$1 million in a bid to tame instability in the
market for the crop, the bank said.
Loan recipient Power Unity
Cambodia Investment Ltd will use the loan to buy cassava from Cambodian
farmers and then export to China.
Cassava farmers, especially
those in the Kingdom’s northeast, have expressed concern on unstable
crop orders primarily from Thailand.
Prices for the plant soared
in early to mid 2011, and farmers scraped other crops such as corn for
the more lucrative cassava. Thai border regulations and oversupply in
Thailand, however, have left many cassava fields in Cambodia
unharvested, the Post reported.
Power Unity could not be reached
yesterday but the Post reported in January that the company planned to
export 300,000 tonnes of cassava to China this year.
While the
majority of cassava exports go to Thailand, the government is now
looking to China as a larger and more stable buyer of one of the
Kingdom’s primary agricultural exports.
“The government has been
encouraging investors to establish cassava-processing factories and
export cassavas to the Chinese market in order to avoid depending on the
markets of neighbouring countries,” RDB Director General Son Koun Thor
said.
Between 70 to 80 per cent of Pailin provinces cassava has
not been harvested because there is no market for it, Chea Kea,
president of a cassava-drying plant in Pailin province, said.
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