Cambodia's manufacturing output hits 7.57 bln USD in H1

PHNOM PENH, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's manufacturing output hit 7.57 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of 2022, a remarkable increase of 75 percent year on year, an industry ministry spokesperson said here on Thursday.

Heng Sokkung, secretary of state and spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation, said that during the Jan.-June period of this year, products worth 5.26 billion dollars were exported while 2.31-billion-dollar-worth products were sold on the domestic market.

Sokkung attributed the situation to a rise in both the domestic and international market demands after the COVID-19 pandemic waned worldwide.

"The manufacturing sector is estimated to contribute 39.9 percent to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022," he said during a press conference, adding that the sector has created some 1.04 million jobs in the country.

Of the 1,947 manufacturing plants in total in the Southeast Asian country, some 1,100 are garment, footwear and travel goods factories, and the rest are food and beverage, automotive assembly, cement, electronics, and pharmaceutical factories, among others, he added.