“National Cashew Policy 2022-2027” has officially been launched to increase productivity and competitiveness of Cambodia’s cashew, one of the country’s priority agro-industrial crops.
The event was presided over by H.E. Pan Sorasak, Minister of Commerce, at the ministry office yesterday afternoon.
With 106 pages, the new policy which can be downloaded via https://cutt.ly/twrzVWOD was endorsed by the Council of Ministers on Jan. 13, 2023, and was aimed to develop cashew production, processing, and marketing to be more competitive to ensure sustainability and economic diversification, and to transform Cambodia into an important producer and supplier of cashew nuts for local, regional and global markets in the near future, the minister stressed.
H.E. Pan Sorasak was also optimistic that the “National Cashew Policy 2022-2027” would become a roadmap and an effective driving force for the enhancement of cashew productivity and competitiveness in terms of yields ad quality, diversification, processing, exports, and added value to all stakeholders in the value chain in order to attract more foreign direct investments by maintaining old markets and looking forwards to new sustainable markets which would create more job opportunities and added value in contribution to alleviating poverty, reducing migration and boosting the national economic growth.
Taking the opportunity, H.E. Pan Sorasak thanked all stakeholders for making the new policy possible, and requested development partners, particularly CAP-RED programme, GIZ CRAS project, HEKS Cambodia, Harvest III, CIRD, and CPSA, for their continued support to the policy.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, in 2022, cashew production covered 435,733 hectares of cultivated area, of which 330,861 hectares were harvested, giving 508,283 tonnes of yields. Some 471,520 tonnes of fresh cashew nuts and 1,557 tonnes of processed ones were exported last year.
