A. Seminar outline :

Cambodia has a tradition of more than 700 years and a natural comparative advantage in pepper cultivation. Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a climbing vine, and its fruit is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. It been used since antiquity for its flavour and as a medicine, and is the world's most traded spice. Cambodia has an excellent climate and soil conditions for pepper, and pepper production was mentioned as early as the 13th century. Especially during the French colonial times so-called “Kampot Pepper” (from the province of Kampot) developed a reputation for its special taste. Intensive production started in the early 20^thcentury, and at its height, production and exports of pepper may have been up to 8,000 tons per year. However, practically the entire pepper production in Cambodia came to an end during the period of the Khmer Rouge. Pepper production was only gradually re-established after the 1990s.

Under a financial support from Trade Development Support Program (TDSP) the Trade Promotion Department of the Ministry of Commerce setting up a Value Chain Information Units to conduct a research on Cambodian Potential products that was identifies by DTIS-2007 in order to produce policy paper for government and private sector getting to understand about tax, tariff, import-export conduction, market requirement, product, and constrain happen along then value chain of the sector. Recently, the VCIU just completed a research and producing a report, however, in order to build a report good enough, the VCIU team have been conducted a validation workshop to collect more relevant inputs from the stakeholders.

B. Topic :Validation Workshop on the Pepper Sector Profile in Cambodia.
C. Date : 20^th July, 2012
D. Venue: Kampong Cham Province ( 7 Makara Hotel)
E. Objective:

• To disseminate the research finding on Pepper Sector that was develop by the Value Chain Information team member of the Ministry of Commerce. The workshop also provides full range of relevant information concerning to the global market of Pepper, requirement of importing countries, targeted market of Cambodian’s Pepper especially urging the Cambodian entrepreneurs, producers, produce more Pepper for export promotion.
• To learn the case study of success exporting company in order to encourage the manufacturers, producers or exporters to benchmark from the successor to update their business for International market such as Japan, Korea, EU Market ..etc.
• Explain and mainstreaming the management of food safety & quality in the new global trade environment to export pepper products to make sure that the exporters have to go through systematic products testing that was recognized internationally.

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Cashew nut exports increased more than 10-fold, to 4,231 tonnes, in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2011 when Cambodia exported 392 tonnes, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce.

The price of the cashew nuts dropped about US$450 from $1,137 per tonne in 2011, to $685 per tonne for 2012. This year’s revenues were $2,898,806 compared to last year’s of $444,669.

Kong Putheara, the director of the Statistics and Information Department, said that cashew nuts grown in Cambodia were absorbed by the Vietnamese market for processing for export or to return to Cambodia.

The huge increase in exports indicates the large demand for Cambodian agricultural products remained high, while some other products were affected by the euro zone debt crisis, he said.

Read more...