Cambodia has seen a positive sign towards achieving its self-imposed target of one million-ton- rice exports by 2015 as the sector has been attracting a number of large investments from China.
In last August, the government launched the rice export policy in a bid to boost the exports of one million tons of milled rice by 2015.
"The main challenges to achieve this target are the shortages of sophisticated post-harvest technologies and capital to buy rice paddy from farmers," Kong Putheara, director of the Commerce Ministry's Planning and Statistics Department, told Xinhua in an interview on Friday.
However, the issues have gradually been broken through as a number of large Chinese firms have signed up to build a hi-tech rice processing plant and to purchase Cambodian rice for Chinese market.
Among those firms is the China Grain Reserves Corporation ( Sinograin) Guangzhou Branch.
The firm signed up on Aug. 16 to buy up to 200,000 tons of milled rice per year from Cambodia and has put its initial investment of 20 million U.S. dollars with a local T.T.Y Corporation to buy rice paddy from farmers to process for the exports to China.
And the China's Yunnan Overseas Investment Co., Ltd. signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a local Soma Group of Cambodia to build a high-tech rice processing plant to process rice for China./.