Deputy Prime Minister Sok Chenda Sophea (left) and agriculture minister Dith Tina address the closing ceremony of the 2024 National Conference on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, held on January 22. Yousos Apdoulrashim
Agriculture is one of the most important sectors of Cambodia. It makes an outsize contribution to national economic growth through ensuring food security, creating job opportunities, providing income to citizens and producing export goods for international markets.
To accelerate the pace of its development, Cambodia must continue to strive and enhance cooperation between the government and the private sector.
This was highlighted by Deputy Prime Minister Sok Chenda Sophea during the closing ceremony of the 2024 annual meeting of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
The meeting, held at the ministry headquarters on January 22, served as an opportunity to review the ministry’s achievements in 2024 and plan its working direction for the coming year.
He noted that supporting agriculture is a priority for the government, which has always paid close attention to it because of its vital role in not only ensuring food security for the Cambodian people but in the promotion of national economic growth.
Chenda Sophea explained that in order to enhance the agriculture sector, the government has established several important policies, such as increasing production, stabilising agricultural product prices, deploying agricultural officers nationwide and building modern agricultural communities.
“Agriculture not only continues to ensure food security but is also increasingly resilient to climate change and natural disasters. It has achieved higher agricultural output for export, with a total of 12 million tons worth $5.3 billion last year,” he said.
He offered six important recommendations to accelerate the development of the sector.
They included the promotion of active planning and the effective implementation of government policies to ensure food security, sustainable economic growth, and environmental protection.
He also stressed the need for cooperation between the ministry and related institutions to expand market access, increase value-added products and boost exports, particularly by creating agricultural-industrial parks to address production bottlenecks and promote agro-industrial integration.
Furthermore, he encouraged banks to provide low-interest loans to the agriculture sector.
His three other recommendations included the creation of domestic organic fertiliser production facilities, the use of comprehensive methods to combat crimes related to fishing, forestry and wildlife, and efforts to strengthen cooperation in accelerating land registration, especially for state land and flooded forests.
The 2025 Budget Brief document reported that the Kingdom’s economy is projected to grow by 6.3% in 2025, primarily driven by the industrial sector, which is expected to continue growing at 8.6%. This is followed by the services sector at 5.6% and agriculture at just 1.1%.
It suggested that the agriculture sector will improve due to the growth of sub-sectors such as crops and livestock, as well as slight growth in the fisheries sub-sector.
Crop cultivation is expected to maintain good growth due to continued investments both domestically and internationally in agricultural product processing, increased public investment and government interventions such as subsidies and trade agreements that promote exports.
Agriculture minister Dith Tina also addressed the meeting.
He noted that to contribute to helping farmers and improving agricultural productivity, the ministry has created nine modern agricultural communities in six provinces, focusing on four strategic crops: rice, vegetables, cashews and pepper. The ministry has also facilitated collaboration with partner banks to provide low-interest loans to these communities.
He added that the crop sub-sector has contributed the most to the agricultural economy, accounting for 61% in 2024, producing 39.4 million tonnes of produce, an increase of 2.59 million tonnes over the previous year.
Rice production alone reached 13.89 million tons, ensuring Cambodia's food security and leaving an export surplus of 8.2 million tonnes.
“We (the agriculture sector) are becoming increasingly resilient to climate change in the crop sub-sector, and this is a result of enhanced promotion and sharing of techniques with farmers to improve the use of seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, along with the wider adoption of technology and agricultural machinery,” explained Tina.
