Increase in Customs Taxes Raises Retail Prices in Cambodia
Customs officers along Cambodia’s border have been instructed to increase their efforts to properly inspect and tax products coming into the country, which has increased the cost of imports and led to a rise in retail prices for a host of goods, government officials, businessmen and economists said. Bou Bunnara, chief of the public relations unit at the General Department of Customs and Excise, said Monday that since early November, the government has been working to enforce customs inspection and taxation in order to cut down on the smuggling of goods into the country, in a bid to increase state revenue. … Ken Loo, secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia, said that while the price of inputs into the garment sector would not be significantly affected, factory owners would still be indirectly affected by higher living costs for workers. … Ho Vandy, co-chair of the Government-Private Sector Working Group on Tourism, said that the tourism sector would “definitely” be affected by the increase in commodities prices. … But while the government’s implementation of customs inspection and taxation laws may be a drag on businesses in the short term, Kang Chandararot, president of the Cambodian Institute for Development Study, said that the rise in retail prices is likely a temporary reaction by the market that can be corrected with a government policy to promote domestically produced goods. …
Aun Pheap and Colin Meyn
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/business/increase-in-customs-taxes-raises-retail-prices-in-cambodia-48461/
