LONDON: Cambodia’s garment and footwear exports earned around US$6.3bn in 2015, recording a growth rate of nearly 6.7% when compared with the year before, according to just-released figures from the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce.
“Exports have been growing for the past 15-20 years in Cambodia continuously,” Ken Loo, secretary general of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), confirmed to just-style – adding that the last year was no exception.
According to the statistics, the country’s garment exports rose to US$5.7bn in 2015, up from US$5.34bn in 2014; while footwear exports generated US$538m in receipts, up from US$441.4m the year before. Textile exports contributed a marginal US$48m.
The European Union (EU) is the biggest buyer of Cambodian exports, accounting for US$2.5bn of the total, thanks to its preferential treatment under the GSP’s ‘Everything But Arms’ scheme. According to the latest US data, the US imported US$2.48bn worth of garments from Cambodia in 2015, although this does not tally with the US$1.7bn claimed by the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce.
Investment has helped. “According to the Cambodian Investment Board, 78 new garment and footwear investment projects were approved in 2014,” an International Labour Organization (ILO) Cambodia Garment and Footwear Sector Bulletin in July 2015 noted, adding these investments “represented 28% of the total newly approved investment in fixed asset value in 2014.”
