Cambodia's first Vietnamese wholesale market is being constructed in Phnom Penh, a Vietnamese trade officer told the Post yesterday.

Tran Tu, trade attaché of the Vietnam Trade Office in Cambodia, said the new wholesale market seeks to enhance Vietnamese produce in Cambodia.

“The idea is good because until now there [has been] no Vietnamese wholesale market in Cambodia,” he said.

The wholesale market, will be located on National Road 5, about nine kilometres from the centre of Phnom Penh, Tu said, adding that he was not sure when it would begin trading.

The decision to open a wholesale market follows the closing of Cambodia’s largest Vietnamese supermarket on Monivong Boulevard last month. Its owner, Vietnamese-Cambodian Seng Meng, is to partner with a local businessman to open up the new wholesale market.

Seng Meng declined to comment on the project, but his assistant confirmed that construction for the new building had begun.

Tu at the Vietnam Trade Office said the old supermarket was closed due to high rental fees, and although he declined to identify the local partner, he said a more affordable deal had been struck on the wholesale market.

“Actually, they set the plan [to build the wholesale market] two years ago, but they waited to find a partner [to] provide the land for the building,” he said.

The planned market will also offer products from Thailand, China and South Korea.

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and Vietnam reached $2.7 billion in the first nine months of this year, a 10 per cent increase compared to $2.45 billion in the same period last year, data from the Vietnamese Trade Office in Phnom Penh show.

Cambodia received $1.28 billion in direct investment from Vietnam between 1994 and 2012, according to data from the Council for the Development of Cambodia. Most of the investment was in agriculture, the financial industry, and tourism.