Daily Times

Cambodia exported products worth 22.48 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, up about 16.4 percent from 19.3 billion dollars a year earlier, said a General Department of Customs and Excise’s report on Tuesday.

Main exported products included apparel, footwear, travel goods, bicycles and a number of agricultural goods such as rice, rubber, cassava, bananas and mangoes, the report said. According to the report, the top five export destinations for the Southeast Asian nation are the United States, Vietnam, China, Japan and Canada.

Meanwhile, the kingdom reported a total import of 29.94 billion dollars in 2022, up about 4.3 percent from 28.7 billion dollars in the year before, the report said. Key imported items included oil and gas, raw materials for garment, footwear and travel goods, vehicles, machinery, electronic appliances, and consuming products, among others, it added.

Cambodian Ministry of Commerce Undersecretary of State Penn Sovicheat said the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement and the Cambodia-China Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA) had injected a vital impetus to the country’s trade growth.

“Both the RCEP and the CCFTA are catalysts for our long-term and sustainable trade growth and the two free trade agreements are a magnet to attract more foreign direct investments to our country,” Sovicheat told Xinhua. “I believe that our trade growth will be higher this year and beyond,” he said.

Sovicheat said the two agreements, which took effect on Jan. 1, 2022, are very beneficial to Cambodia as they have given the kingdom bigger market access with tariff concessions.

The RCEP comprises 15 Asia-Pacific countries including 10 ASEAN member states, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and their five trading partners of China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.