The Vietnam Cashew Association (Vinacas) gave the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture a $66,000 grant late last week to support cashew production in the Kingdom, according to ministry officials.

According to Hean Vanhan, director general at General Directorate of Agriculture, the grant will go toward enacting a four-year plan that will see 1 million cashew trees planted on a new 500,000 hectare farm by 2022.

“We are planning to plant one million cashew trees in order to build up the capacity of our cashew production,” he said. “The main market for raw cashew nuts is Vietnam, and Vinacas wants to build a strong relationship with us for the future, so that we will have enough cashews for export.”

He added that no agreements had yet been made for future cashew exports to Vietnam, but that a deal was expected to be forged in the near future.

In the first 11 months of this year, Cambodia exported 71,293 tonnes of raw cashews to Vietnam, Thailand, China and India. Vietnam alone absorbed 98 percent of these exports. Vietnam exports approximately 3.2 million tonnes of processed cashews to the international market each year.