The Agriculture Ministry is working to have more Cambodian rice exporters permitted to sell in China, as exports to the country have almost doubled in a year, according to government reports.
A statement by the ministry’s general department of agriculture said 26 Cambodian rice companies had so far received permission to export to China, but there were eight others seeking permission who had been denied because they did not mill their own rice.
The statement, released on Wednesday, said the ministry’s Chinese counterparts had not responded to requests for increased access.
“We have sent a request once on March 27 and again on April 19 by email, but so far we haven’t heard back from them,” it said.
Hean Vanhorn, deputy director of the general department of agriculture, could not be reached for comment.
After seeing a 9 percent bump in total rice exports to China last year compared to the year before, the first quarter of this year has seen massive growth of 82 percent year-over-year, according to ministry export data released earlier this week, media outlets have reported.
China is Cambodia’s biggest single export market for rice, at 127,460 tons last year, followed by France, Poland, the U.K. and the Netherlands, a ministry report released earlier this year says.
But E.U. countries together dwarf other markets, buying 63 percent of Cambodian exported rice last year, the report says.
