Agriculture Contributes To Helping Cambodia’s Economic Growth: PM Hun Sen

“The agriculture sector today is still playing significant role in promoting local production growth, job creation, and contributing to the poverty reduction of the people.  At the same time, the agriculture sector will continue the basic role for economic growth and socio-economic development in Cambodia in the coming decades although Cambodia has diversified her economy, including industrialization”, Samdech Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia said last week. ...

“The growth in agricultural sector is not only improving our economy but also transforming the red dry land to become the green area in all seasons, as well as allowing our youths in rural area to be employed, reducing migration, and improving their livelihood.” According to the report made by H.E Chan Sarun, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the agriculture sector has grown in average about 4.3% in 2012, in which the rice production was about 3 million hectares, and the land of 2.98 million hectares could be cultivated, and the average yield per year in both dry and rainy seasons is 3.117 tons per hectares. ...

 “We have also expected that this poverty rate will further decline to under 19% in 2013.  In the future, we will try our best to drag down the poverty rate until the elimination of the poverty through the continued development of agriculture and economic diversification.” ...

To impose no land tax is like helping them right in the field. For example, they need to spend one or two hundred thousand Riel per hectare as tax. “When we do not charge tax from them, they could use the money for something else, like purchasing a bicycle for their kids or other agricultural utensils.” ...

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