A senior executive officer of Cambodian rice-crackers manufacturer Lyly Food Industry Co Ltd has said the company will build a special economic zone (SEZ) in Preash Sihanouk province and plans to launch it next year.
Keo Mom, chief executive officer of the Phnom Penh company, said her brand new SEZ, called Kampong Seila Special Economic Zone, will be located in Preah Sihanouk province.
She said it will accommodate a mixture of factories and industries, especially for automotive spare parts. “We welcome all investors who want to put their factory in our SEZ,” Mom added.
“We have already received approval for the operation of the special economic zone from the Council for the Development of Cambodia and we are also applying for another licence for an SME (small and medium enterprise) cluster zone,” Mom continued.
She said Kampong Seila SEZ is around 79 hectares for setting up factories and industries. “We plan to launch the SEZ next year, but we cannot give the exact date because COVID-19 is still ongoing. At present, we are preparing the land.” For the SME cluster, the company will focus on food processing and support industries. The Cambodian government will soon implement two new related laws, namely the draft law on investment and the draft law on special economic zones. The government is sending the new draft law on investment to the private sector to discuss ways to make it more comprehensive and help the Kingdom to become an attractive destination for new investment and to improve the investment environment in the country.
The draft law aims to bolster the country’s competitiveness in the sense that the economic infrastructure can be diversified and there can be more resilience to the crisis in the region and across the globe.
It also modernises and boosts the productivity of local industry to link with the regional and global value chains through the movement of capital flows, technological transfers and know-how technology.
The new investment law will provide an incentive for transparency, no discrimination, competitiveness and support socio-economic policy. It will also protect the rights and legal benefits of investors in Cambodia.
LyLy was founded in May 2002 to give opportunities of employment to Cambodia’s poor, illiterate, unqualified, orphans etc and to enable farmers to grow food for it.
As of 2019, Cambodia had in total 54 special economic zones, according to the Council for the Development of Cambodia. In 2019, the exports from Cambodia’s special economic zones were $2.688 billion, up 27 percent compared with 2018.
This article was first published in Khmer Times. All contents and images are copyright to their respective owners and sources.
