Roundup: Cambodia Booms Garment Industry

Cambodia's garment industry is growing rapidly and has become one of the biggest and fastest growing industries in the country.

When the Royal government was established in 1993, the garment industry began from scratch due to the three decades of the civil war. Nowadays there are 181 garment factories in the country developing from 20 ones in 1995.

Sok Siphana, secretary of the Ministry of Commerce, told reporters that although foreign investments to the country decreased in the past few years, Cambodian garment manufacturing industry has still seen tremendous increase in foreign investments.

In the first nine months of 2000, the investments in the sector rose by 38 percent, compared with the same period last year.

The Cambodian Investment Board (CIB) approved US$739.2 million worth of projects in garment sector as of November, 2000, a CIB latest report said.

The garment industry has become the biggest hard currency earner in the country.

A CIB statistics report said that Cambodia started garment export in 1995, with 20 million dollars. In 1998, the export in garment products earned 378 million dollars and in 1999, export amounted to 600 million dollars, a 60 percent increase over 1998, making up 90 percent of the total exports in the country.

The garment export was up 48 percent in the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period of 1999, the report said.

Of the total 600-million dollar exports in Cambodian garments, three-quarters of them were sold to the United States.

In 2000, the United States gave Cambodia 5 percent bonus quota on garment exports. The European Union formalized an existing quota-free, duty-free agreement and increased the proportion of Europe-bound garment from 25 percent to 35 percent.

The foreign investors in the industry mainly came from Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, South Korea, the United States, Britain and Australia.

The development of the garment industry has created more job opportunities for the Cambodian people, about 200,000 Cambodians are engaged in garment work with salary ranging from 40 to 80 dollars monthly.






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