Agri-exports surge 55% in Jan-Feb
CAMBODIA exported atotalof1,599,922.37 tonnes of major non-milled-rice agricultural products in the first two months of this year, an increase of 569,493.88 tonnes or 55.27 per cent compared to the same period in 2020, according to Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Veng Sakhon.
The ministry listed 43 such products on the roster of exports, which were sold to 25 countries and territories.
Cassava chips, fresh cassava and paddy weighed in at 802,451.56 tonnes, 154,750 tonnes and 287,850 tonnes, Sakhon said, noting that 559,033 tonnes of these three products did not pass through phytosanitary control posts.
Cashew nuts, red corn kernels, fresh bananas, fresh mangoes, fresh chillies, palm oil and rice bran reached 79,473.51 tonnes, 78,856.14 tonnes, 75,645.57 tonnes, 43,680 tonnes, 32,417.12 tonnes, 7,176.69 tonnes and 6,250 tonnes, the minister said.
The remaining 33 other products clocked in at 31,371.25 tonnes, he added.
In Lai Huot, owner of the Madam Huot cashew nut processing cottage industry in southwestern Kampong Thom province’s Kampong Svay district, said that with a stronger market for cashew nuts than last year, her
business has increased its workforce to 80 to ramp up production and ensure that orders are met.
She struck a deal with Top Planning Japan Co Ltd last year to supply the company with finished cashews. According to the plan, Madam Huot must produce 90 tonnes of kernels, which will weigh 15 tonnes when processed.
“We agreed to sell cashew nuts to this Japanese company for $13 per kilogramme. I’m glad it bought cashews from the community
and created jobs for the locals,” Lai Huot said.
While 43,680 tonnes of fresh mangoes were exported in the first two months of this year, their price is falling sharply due to a lack of market. The ministry is pushing growers to register their plantations as orchards for export to China.
Mong Reththy, board chairman of agro-industrial conglomerate Mong Reththy Group Co Ltd, which invests in the cultivation and export of mangoes, wrote on his official Facebook page on February
27 that the Covid-19 crisis had led to a sharp drop in the price of fresh mangoes.
He said his 50,000 Keo Romiet mango trees in the Mong Rithy Sen Chey agrotourism development resort produce about 300 tonnes each year, or just 6kg per tree.
“[We] collected Keo Romiet mangoes for the animals to feed on this time around, whereas we’d previously export them to the EU. It’s all down to the Covid-19 crisis – prices have tumbled since there are no buyers at all.
And now my animals can’t even eat it all, there’s just so much of it,” Reththy said.
Late last month, the ministry’s General Directorate of Agriculture said it had submitted a list of 25 mango farms and three treatment facilities to the Chinese General Administration of Customs for sanitary and phytosanitary inspections.
This came after the farms and treatment facilities passed an initial check from inspectors from the directorate and as the government prepares for the first commercial shipment of fresh Cambodian mangoes of the ubiquitous Keo Romiet variety following three trial shipments to China via Vietnam at the start of December.
This was the second such list after the first on February 12, and brings the total to 30 farms and four treatment facilities, said the directorate, adding that approval would result in the Chinese side granting export permits for fresh mango.
Cambodia exported 8.55 million tonnes of six major cash crops, through formal and informal channels, worth more than $2.32 billion last year as of December 15, according to Sakhon.
In a December 24 post on his official Facebook page, the minister listed the crops as cassava, cashew nuts, mangoes, yellow bananas, peppercorn and Pailin longan.
EVEN with a flurry of road infrastructure projects nearing completion,Sihanoukville’s real estate market belies the promise of robust growth that 2018 brought for the oncesleepy coastal town, according to observers in the Kingdom.
In late 2019, the government allocated $300 million from the national budget to build 34 roads and for other infrastructure projects in Preah Sihanouk province.
The move aimed to transform its provincial capital Sihanoukville and surrounding areas into a multi-purpose model special economic zone and a sustainable pole of national development that will allure more tourists and fresh investment from abroad.
Oem Senghou, a branch manager at Sihanoukville-based Century 21 Zillion Holding, a sub-franchise of real estate agency Century 21 Cambodia, told The Post on March 3 that the province’s real estate sector had begun to exhibit small growth spurts since the end of last year.
This, however, followed a tumultuous period of sharp declines in property transactions and rentals in Preah Sihanouk after hordes of Chinese tourists and investors quit the province following a nationwide government ban on online gambling. The arrival of Covid-19 only compounded
the sector’s woes, he said.
But early-year growth ambitions were quashed by the February 20 community transmission, plunging the market to new lows, he said, stressing that economic activity in the “nearly paralysed” rental segment has more than halved.
The latest transmission “is having a number of repercussions for the real estate market in Preah Sihanouk, especially the rental market, which has been pushed to deadlock after authorities identified a series of positive cases of Covid19”, Senghou said.
“If the number of Covid-19 cases detected in Preah Sihanouk continues to increase, the market will continue its decline,” he said.
According to Senghou, per-sqm land prices in Sihanoukville range from $1,8003,500 in commercial areas, $250-300 in more remote suburbs and $500-700 in areas adjacent to main roads.
These rates are 20-30 per cent lower than they were when the province’s real estate sector peaked in 20182019, he said.
But in a fit of optimism,
Senghou added: “After the construction of the infrastructure is complete and Covid-19 is completely under control, I think the market will start its recovery process to pre-2020 levels.”
Keller Williams (KW) Sen Sok regional operation principal Sam Soknoeun claimed that property prices in the town’s prime locations can reach more than $4,000 per sqm when the provincial real estate market is at its hottest.
Nonetheless, prices in more remote suburbs remain at $100-300, he said.
Even with the government busy building a series of roads, the effects of Covid-19 on the real estate sector cannot be mitigated so easily, he pointed out.
“Real estate can only make a significant recovery if Covid-19 is controlled 100 per cent effectively and the roads are ready. However, property prices will no longer see such leaps – and that’s because in Preah Sihanouk province they are already astronomical,” Soknoeun said.
On February 22, Local developer 5LH Lorn City Development Co Ltd’s (Lorn City Group) $100 million residential project broke ground in Preah Sihanouk to meet the growing housing demand in the province, the provincial administration said in the press release.
Tol Lorn, founder of Borey Lorn City II Sihanoukville, said the project will be built on 66ha in Prey Nop district’s Bit Traing commune.
Speaking at a press conference on June 9, provincial governor Kuoch Chamroeun said that as of May, the province has attracted nearly $4 billion in investment projects since 1994, with just 20 companies having developed projects on a cumulative 11,637ha on the province’s beaches and islands with total capital investment of $3.9 billion.
He said an additional 60 companies had unveiled plans to invest a total of $10.74 billion in hotels and tourism.