Australia, New Zealand focus on trade, investment in Cambodia, Long Heng

Australia and New Zealand eye trade, investment on Cambodia


The Australian and New Zealand trade agencies announced on June 16 that they partnered in Cambodia through a shared presence in the market to investigate trade and investment opportunities in the growing market.

This announcement was made during the visit of a delegation of twelve Australian and New Zealand companies to Phnom Penh on 15-17 June, 2010 to explore project opportunities in Cambodia ’s development technical assistance to international projects as diverse as infrastructure, agriculture and rural development, education training and health, environmental management, power and energy.

Australian and New Zealand announces collaboration in trade and investment in Cambodia .

The two agencies with the support of the Australia Embassy arranged an innovative seminar in 16 June, called “developing Cambodia ,”. “This seminar is a showcase event featuring presentations by senior officials of the Royal Government of Cambodia, multilateral and bilateral organizations and private sector providers,” The Australian ambassador, Margaret Amdamson, opened the seminar. Cambodian economy predicted to grow more this year,” she said.

At the opening session of seminar, H.E.Sun Chanthol, senior minister and vice chairman of the council for the development of Cambodia appealed to the Australian businesspeople and New Zealand traders to come here. “Your investment will have to create jobs for the local people and will help to transfer the knowledge to strengthen capacity building of labor force,” he said.

He continued that now Cambodia is stable and have good investment climate for investors and also has the political stability, Macro-economics. “The investment from Australia and New Zealand is still limited figure and we have to enlarge more,” he said, adding that all sides also already inked the agreement of investment protection to provide the mutual benefits for all sides.

“We still have large of labor forces and have rooms for investors,” he noted. The government has considered that the private sector is driving engine force to speed up economic growth of the country,” He emphasized.

“We provided all facilitation and accession easily to attract the investment to be here and the country also gained the duty free and no tax from many friend countries including EU, China, US, and South Korea and Japan and others that is the chance to expand trade,” he said, adding that here foreign investors can run 100 per cent of their businesses or shareholders.

He recommended that investors should focus on the food processing, agriculture, mine, oil, gas, tourism, training unskilled labor, and infrastructure.

“We also just ratified the ASEAN-New Zealand and Australia Free Agreement Area and that will foster more trade and investment,” he noted. . He recommended that investors should focus on the food processing, agriculture, mine, oil, gas, tourism, training unskilled labor, and infrastructure.

The developing Cambodia 2010 seminar organized by the Australian Trade Commission and New Zealand trade and enterprise (NZTE) was supported by senior Cambodia government officials as well as major multi-national donor institutions including UNDP, ADB, AusAID, and the World Bank. This is first collaborative commercial initiative of austrade and NZTE to jointly promote trade and investment in Cambodia .

Ms Maurine Lam, Australia senior trade and investment commissioner to Thailand and Ms Karlene Davis made the announcement co-jointly. “We are delighted at such a signal initiative in the region and thereby implement our respective government’s clear policy on the two countries working more closely together in trade and investment matters,” said Ms Lam. Ms David said that the vision of the two governments was seen “in the shared resource that was being established in Phnom Penh,”.

Ms David highlighted Australia ’s and New Zealand ’s expertise across the region and the benefits that the developing Cambodia 2010 mission and seminar can bring. Australia and New Zealand are world leaders in providing consultancies across a range of fields to developing projects. These include in the areas of infrastructure, environmental challenges, clean water and sanitation, vocational education, governance and health outcomes. Australia and New Zealand companies have long histories of working effectively in the region and have earned reputations for high quality, reliable service provision, she said.
The data from the Australia embassy on June 16, 2010 said that the total trade volume of the two countries was worth about 67 million Australia dollars in 2009 and it increased about 14 per cent if comparing with 2008. In 2009, Australian export to Cambodia was worth 42 million Australia dollars decreasing minus 3. 7 per if comparing with 2008 and in 2009, import from Cambodia cost about 25 million Australian dollars increasing with 69.4 per cent if comparing with 2008.

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