Six pairs of Chinese and Cambodian firms signed off on a half-dozen business deals over the past two days in Phnom Penh worth more than $1.5 billion, the bulk of it for a five-year stone crushing project.
“Some Chinese companies signed business deals to buy products from Cambodian companies, while some signed deals to sell products to Cambodian companies,” Chheav Pha, who heads the Commerce Ministry’s marketing department, said Monday at the start of a four-day trade expo.
Mr. Pha said Cambodia’s King Crushing Stone Company signed a five-year deal worth $1.5 billion Monday with China’s Yong Jun Stone Crushing for a project in Cambodia, but had no further details about the agreement.
He said deals were also signed at the expo to export 200,000 tons of cassava chips to China for $49 million, to import wood drying machines from China for $1.2 million, and for the development of a Chinese-backed condominium project in Cambodia worth $17 million.
At a separate event in Phnom Penh on Sunday, Khmer Brewery Limited, the maker of Cambodia beer, inked a deal that will see China’s Fuzhou Newgroup Industry distribute the beer across China.
Sok Chantha, business development manager for the Chip Mong Group, which owns Khmer Brewery, said Monday that the deal would last one year, but declined to say how much beer would be exported or reveal the value of the agreement.
“The importer was interested in our beer and thought that the quality of our beer was good enough to compete with others in the Chinese market,” Mr. Chantha said. “So they asked for a deal with us to export our beer over there and we are happy to do it, because it’s a good opportunity to expand our market.”
Also on Sunday, Cambodia’s Mekong Oryza Trading penned a tentative deal with a Chinese firm to export 30,000 tons of milled rice over the course of the coming year.
Mekong Oryza director Hun Lak said the price was still under negotiation.
“I think that China will keep importing more milled rice from Cambodia because the importers recognize the quality of our milled rice,” he said.
In August, Cambodia’s state-owned Greed Trade agreed to a deal with China to export 100,000 tons of milled rice.
