Cambodia Rice Exports Drop 8.4% Jan-Sep

PHNOM PENH, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Cambodia exported 389,264 tonnes of rice in the first nine months of the year, a fall of 8.4 percent compared with the same period last year, official data showed on Monday.

Exports to China, Cambodia’s top export market, accounted for 96,714 tonnes, data from the Secretariat of One Window Service for Rice Export Formality, a joint private-government working group on rice, showed.

Cambodia had exported 421,966 tonnes of rice between January and September last year.

Moul Sarith, the Secretary General of the Cambodia Rice Federation, said that the decline was after changes in exchange rate between Chinese Yuan and U.S. dollars that had made the price of Cambodian products to China more expensive, among other reasons.

“The price of Cambodian rice is higher than the local price in China and the Chinese government has also stopped subsidizing,” Moul Sarith said.

“The prices of agricultural products have decreased. So, some Chinese people consume local products. So they (have) reduced imports from other countries, not just from Cambodia,” he said. (Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Editing by Vyas Mohan)

https://www.agriculture.com/markets/newswire/cambodia-rice-exports-fell-84-percent-in-jan-sept