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Cambodia: Auto, electrical biz to boost value chain positions

The Royal Government of Cambodia has committed to implementing a comprehensive cross-ministerial action plan that will make it easier for investors to set up automotive and electrical businesses in Cambodia and increase the cost-competitiveness of their operations.

Cambodia’s goal will be to move up the value chain into more complex and higher value-added components in the automotive and electrical manufacturing sectors, Cambodia Chamber of Commerce (CCC) vice-president Lim Heng said.

“The government is encouraging the use of environmentally-friendly vehicles, such as electric ones. This roadmap will provide the wherewithal for connectivity to local and global value chains, and enable Cambodia to shift to higher-value chain positions,” Heng said.

The announcement follows 2019 data from the World Bank suggesting that the Kingdom is ready to advance its manufacturing industries and climb further up the Global Value Chain (GVC) ladder.

“While Cambodia has seen rapid growth in limited manufacturing GVCs for many years, particularly garments and footwear, the country has not yet transitioned to the next stage of GVC participation of advanced manufacturing and services. Examples of such stages of participation are motor vehicles parts and components, electronics assembly, medical devices manufacturing, and the services segments of value chains such as design or marketing and branding,” Heng pointed out.

Over the next decade, Cambodia aims to become an Automotive component manufacturing hub, making a wide range of low-to-medium complexity components for export. A more mature components ecosystem will also allow Cambodia to scale up four-wheeler assembly in the future.

In the near term, however, Cambodia will focus on the ongoing opportunity to grow the manufacturing of simpler, more labour-intensive automotive components for export (e.g., wiring harnesses, seats and simpler electronic and electrical components), while increasing backward linkages for locally assembled two-wheelers.

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Author: Josh Downs 

Source: Khmer Times 

March 29, 2022