South Korea's announcement in December that it planned to import dried mangoes from Cambodia was seen as a sign that the country's lackluster mango export sector was set to improve. However, a lack of machinery for processing the fruit in the Kingdom, prior to export, has meant that the South Korean demand has not been met, officials said.
According to a post on the Ministry of Commerce’s Facebook page on Tuesday 9 August, the Cambodian government and the Korean Trade-Investment Promotion Agency met in Phnom Penh this week to seek a solution to this problem. However, it did not go into details.
“We already have a memorandum of understanding, but we still lack warehouses capable of drying the mangoes,” Hean Vanhan, deputy director of the Agriculture Ministry’s general directorate of agriculture told Khmer Times.
“We are waiting for the private sector to invest in the fruit industry,” he said.
Cambodia has 65,000 hectares of mango plantations, producing 2.6 million tons per year.
Currently, mangoes are largely exported to neighboring Thailand and Vietnam where they are processed or exported fresh, if of high enough quality, said Mr. Vanhan, noting that proper investment in machinery in Cambodia would mean farmers would be able to receive higher prices for their fruit.
Mong Retthy, whose agro-industrial conglomerate is one the country’s leading mango exporters, told Khmer Times that plans to export dried mangoes to South Korea were stalled. Fruit producers were still waiting for the suitable facilities, he said.
“We need to have mango drying machines here,” Mr. Retthy said. “We want to export directly to EU markets or China and not sell to Vietnam and Thailand, where they package our mangoes to export to other markets.”
Om Saroeun, president of a mango plantation cooperative in Kampong Speu province, agreed that a lack of processing facilities was hindering exports.
“We harvest over 20,000 tons per year from our community, but only 2,000 to 3,000 tons of those are of high enough quality to be selected to sell to exporters,” Mr. Saroeun said.
