Sweden Inc talked to agri, electric cars
Swedish businessmen and investors are urged to take advantage of great opportunities to invest in Cambodia, said the Ministry of Trade’s Foreign Minister Ok Bung, while urging them to increase imports of agricultural products and manufactured products.
He also urged them to invest more in the electric vehicle sector and consider setting up a Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia.
Bung said this on May 24 when he met the newly appointed Swedish Ambassador to Cambodia Jon Astrom Gröndahl on behalf of Minister of Trade Pan Sorasak – who is away in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.
In his speech, Bung said that continuous efforts are being made to diversify trade through bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements to improve the business and investment climate.
Cambodia has also implemented the International Labor Organization’s program for better factories, which aims to improve working conditions, eliminate child labor and ensure compliance with international standards.
“Both Cambodia and Sweden have had good relations in the past, especially in trade and the economic sectors. We are determined to strengthen this relationship to increase trading volume to ensure economic growth after Covid-19, he added.
In it, he also noted that Cambodia has implemented several measures to overcome the effects of the pandemic, including an intensive vaccination campaign that supported a full reopening of the country in November last year.
At the same time, Gröndahl, who lives in Bangkok, responded by expressing his strong commitment to encourage more Swedish businessmen and investors to explore the trade, investment and tourism potential of Cambodia.
He also promised to bring Cambodia-Sweden’s bilateral trade volume to its full potential.
Royal Academy of Cambodia’s economics researcher Ky Sereyvath told The Post on May 25 that the trade volume between Cambodia and Sweden was small, which meant that both sides had to strengthen cooperation and increase investment.
He said that Cambodia can export agricultural products to Sweden. “As a country with a cold climate, more agricultural products from the tropics may be needed.”
The fact that both sides are committed to increasing trade volume is good, he said, especially with the opening of more trade channels in Sweden, which can help diversify Cambodia’s export markets for agricultural products.
Although delivery to Sweden will take a long time, fresh produce would be difficult to export, Sereyvath stated, but Cambodia could sell frozen meat, peppercorns, cereals and other dry products.
A report from the Ministry of Trade showed that the trade volume between the two countries was about 64 million dollars in 2020. Between January and May last year, the total trade was 23 million dollars.
Annual bilateral trade between the two countries has remained tilted in the UK’s favor in recent years, although imports from Cambodia increased by 39 percent to $ 11.99 million in 2020 compared to a year earlier, according to Trading Economics.
The latest figures on the statistics website indicate that Cambodian exports to Sweden in 2020 amounted to USD 52.12 million in 2020, a decrease of 28.2 percent from USD 72.58 million in 2019.
In 2020, “clothing, knitted or crocheted” accounted for $ 25.22 million or about 48.4 percent of Cambodia’s exports – down from $ 32.26 million in 2019 or 44 percent of the year’s total – while “wood and wood products, charcoal “Amounted to $ 3.42 million, or about two-sevenths of the Kingdom’s imports.