Cambodia, Thailand maintains trade expansion

BANGKOK, April 28 (TNA) - Despite an ongoing land dispute near the ancient Preah Vihear temple, Cambodia and Thailand have agreed to maintain bilateral trade expansion at 30 percent annually, said Thai Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom on Sunday. Mr. Boonsong said he had last week attended the 4th Joint Trade Committee (JTC) meeting between the two countries in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh and conferred with his Cambodian counterpart Chom Prasith in which both sides were satisfied with bilateral trade expansion. Both sides agreed that trade should be maintained at growing 30 percent annually between 2012 and 2015 as agreed in the previous JTC meeting, he said. Trade statistics showed that combined trade value last year grew to 4.03 billion U.S. dollars from 2.869 billion U.S. dollars in 2011, an increase of about 40.5 per cent. Major reasons attributed to the sharp growth are the trade and investment cooperation plan from 2012 to 2015 and an implementation of ASEAN Economic Community due to start at the end of 2015. Both sides also agreed during the last week’s meeting to cooperate on rice market with three other ASEAN members including Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, all of them are key rice producers. Cambodia and Thailand also agreed to cooperate on stabilizing prices of cassava of which the two countries are major producers in a bid to maintain bargaining power. On transportation facility, the two countries welcomed bus services between the key Thai border district of Aranyaprathet and the Cambodian border town of Poi Pet. (TNA)