Cambodia’s state-owned rice exporter on Tuesday signed an agreement to export 100,000 tons of milled rice to China’s biggest government-owned food processing company.
The memorandum of understanding between China National Cereal, Oils and Foodstuffs Corp. (COFCO) and Cambodia’s Green Trade company will see rice exports begin this month and continue until April next year, according to the agreement.
Commerce Ministry spokesman Ken Ratha said the agreement would turn China into a major market for local rice exporters and help the country reach its 2015 target of exporting 1 million tons of milled rice within the calendar year. “This new figure will be in addition to the rice we already export to China,” Mr. Ratha said.
“It is related to the exporting of 1 million tons of milled rice.”
The deal will potentially more than triple the amount of rice Cambodia exported last year to China—28,302 tons, according to data from the Secretariat of One Window Service for Rice Export Formality. In the first seven months of this year, Cambodia exported 9,540 tons of rice to China and a total of 203,988 tons internationally, down 1.6 percent from last year.
