Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), which last month became the first company to officially export bananas from Cambodia, has secured more orders for the fruit and will ship another 100 tonnes of bananas from its plantations in Ratanakkiri province today, a company representative said.
                    
The order will be transported overland to port facilities in Vietnam and then loaded onto a container ship bound for its buyer in China with final destinations potentially reaching Japan and European Union markets, according to Thach Quanh Tha, director of administration for HAGL.
                    
HAGL is a Vietnamese conglomerate that operates in property, mining, commercial agriculture and hydropower. The company owns a total of 1,000 hectares of banana plantations in northeastern Cambodia through three of its subsidiaries, Hoang Anh Andong Meas, Hoang Anh Romphat and Hoang Anh Daun Penh Agrico. Thach said banana cultivation was part of the agro giant’s efforts to diversify its Cambodian operations beyond rubber and palm oil. He said the company has invested in planting 14 different types of fruit for export and plans to deliver the first international shipment of dragonfruit in September.

During the official visit, Cambodia’s Prime Minister allowed 4 big companies to pay courtesy meeting for work discussion: Denso Cambodia Co., Ltd., Toyota Tsoshu Co., Ltd., Mizuho Bank, and Minebea Cambodia Co., Ltd at New Otani Hotel, Tokyo, Japan. The Prime Minister took the time to show investment potentials in Cambodia as following:
- Investment on infrastructure (water, electricity, reasonable labor cost, etc)    - Cambodia welcome a lot of investment from Japan 

The courtesy meeting was aimed at attracting more Japanese investors to invest in Cambodia in manufacturing sector in order to contribute to income and job creation for Cambodian people as well as income for Cambodia as a whole. Since the relationship between Cambodia and Japan has always been on good terms, it builds more confidence for Japanese investors to invest more in Cambodia.

Japanese insurer Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co has opened a representative office in Phnom Penh to explore the insurance market in Cambodia and offer its non-life insurance products to Japanese companies operating in the Kingdom through referrals by its affiliated local insurers, according to a company press release. 

The insurer said the new representative office in the capital would be used to collect information on Cambodia’s insurance market, which has been expanding steadily as a result of the country’s rapid economic growth.

Cambodia moved a step closer to becoming an oil-producing nation yesterday after the government finalised its long-awaited production-sharing agreement with Singapore-listed KrisEnergy to develop the country’s first oil field. 

KrisEnergy has been the operator of Cambodia’s offshore Block A in the Gulf of Thailand since purchasing the stake of departing US energy giant Chevron in 2014. The company has applied to develop the block’s Apsara oil field, where Chevron first struck oil more than a decade ago. 

According to the fiscal and technical agreement, KrisEnergy has 60 days to declare a final investment decision that outlines the investment cost for Phase 1A of the Apsara Oil development project, and would start extracting crude sometime in 2019. 

Under the revised terms of a petroleum agreement first inked with Chevron in 2002, the government retains a 5 percent interest in Block A.

The Ministry of Commerce announced that representatives from the northwest Chinese province of Shaanxi have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to purchase 300,000 tonnes of Cambodian rubber, with exports to begin next year, state news agency AKP said on Friday. The MoU comes after a meeting between Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak and a delegation of Chinese and Japanese investors.

Implementation of a previously announced three-year $20 million programme to increase local vegetable and fragrant rice production will begin next month to help boost domestic supply and reduce imports. 

The goal of the project is to increase local production of vegetables by 160 tonnes per day and production of 500,000 tonnes of paddy rice a year. 

Vegetable production will focus on 13 priority crops including lettuce, chili, bok choy, tomato, cucumber and green melon. While the rice crops from the programme will be solely meant for exports. 

Between 500 to 600 tonnes of vegetables per day are imported to Cambodia.