Cambodia Views of Silk Situation

Mr. THAO Sokmuny

Vice president of SDC

Excellencies, chairman, leaders and representative of all silk unions and associations, honorable guests, ladies and gentlemen,

It’s the second time that Cambodia have joint the member assembly.

On behalf of Minister of Ministry of Commerce Cambodia, H.E chairman and all the member of Cambodia Silk Sector Promotion and Development Commission (SDC in short), I would like to express my sincere thanks for the ISU invitation.

It is an honor for me and my team to join the International Silk Union Members Assembly 2019.

First of all, I would like to recap on Cambodia silk situation where silk industry in Cambodia is still using between 90 to 95% of imported silk yarn from China and Vietnam, which mean the total of up to 400 tons of silk yarn per year. Cambodia silk producer groups are based in some region including Takeo, Kom Pot, Bantey Meanchey (Phnom Srok) and Siemreap province, which the total of silk yarn per year now is approximately half a ton.

As of now, there are improvements toward Cambodia silk sector according to the support from Cambodia Government, development partner and a supporting partner like ISU. Cambodian silk product are now well known and reaching some international market including USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, Germany and France, but this form of export are still very limited and small.

Cambodian silk product and production is the work of art which required more human touch, time and labour. The sector are still using hand weaving and in the handicrafts sector. This would remain applicable to an absolute specialty, hand crafted products with human inputs of high skill.

Silk sector played an important role in Cambodia economic as it has contributed to thousands of families in Cambodia rural areas, especially for young under-educated women and house-wife. But on the other hand, our sericulture are still weak in term of production and investment, this is the reason why we are still using a lot of imported silk yarn from China and Vietnam. The mulberry plant farming to rearing of silk in Cambodia still demanded high investment, specialized skills and human inputs besides the technological contribution. A silk product weighing just 100 gram means an output of nurturing of as many as 450 nos of silk worms over a period of about 21 days cycle; that too, up to the cocoon stage only. By the time the raw silk turns out to be a finished product, the human touch multiplies and eventually that becomes a luxury product.

As a research, silk is one of the ancient, highly prized fabric, silk is derived from the thread produced by the silkworm species Bombyx Mori. About 202,000 MT of silk are produced each year (about 0.24% of total fiber, there are approximately 85 million metric tons of fibers produced each year according to Technon Orbichon, silk production is approximately 0.235% of this total) in more than 60 countries, but the bulk of production is concentrated in a handful of: China, India, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. Compared to other natural fibers, silk is incredibly valuable and commands a price of around $15 per kilo, making the value of production around $3.03 billion per year.

If we are talking about silk technologies, Cambodia is still behind, where we based our production in hand weaving technique, as it has passed on from one generation to the next. According to the research above, we are very concerned about our future silk production if we continues to import more than 80% of the yarn each year. Cambodia also need to look at the sector sustainability as environmental concerns are growing, popularity of natural and low impact textiles such as silk and pure cotton are increasing rapidly, currently our market (local) for traditional silk (Ikat) is in the upward trend.

Our local market will continues to be the driving force for the final silk product, not only in terms of production but, also in terms of consumption, due to the traditional attachments and love for silk across the country. According to the growing of local silk business, export is still our second driving force for the growth of the silk sector and future investment for Cambodia sericulture.

Cambodia still need to promote silk collaboration with the sincere efforts, for which alliance and collaboration are essential elements for Cambodia silk sector future sustainability.

For a recap, Cambodia government have work very closely with the development partners and line ministries for sector sustainability. With the project and Minister support, Ministry of Commerce have taken the lead in the up-date of National Silk Strategy 2016-2020 by 18 March 2016.

The National Silk Strategy has become the guide line for Cambodia silk sector development. The strategy focused on four main strategic objectives including:

Enhance the enabling environment and institutional support for the silk sector

Facilitate market entry and promotion for Cambodia’s High Value Silk products

Develop skills and improve product quality, design and innovation in the skill textiles and garment subsectors

Revitalize and strengthen integration of sericulture in the silk value chain to increase domestic silk yarn production.

As a summary, Cambodia still need numbers of specific support and intervention from partners to accelerate our silk status including:

High silk yarn production technology

Supporting technology on sericulture and producing high quality silk yarn

Design and weaving technology

Silk worm breeding technology

At the same time, we are very fortunate to become one of the member of ISU in 2018, which have given us a valuable support in capacity building. We have 5 members already joint the two weeks international workshop/training programme from 30 October-13 November 2019 at ZSTU on: Processing Technology and Innovation Design of Modern Silk Products.

Last but not least, on behalf of Minister of Ministry of Commerce Cambodia, H.E chairman of SDC and silk sector, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to ISU, ZSTU and the Government of China, in giving us the opportunity to become the ISU members and continuous support to develop our silk sector further. We hope that this continuous support will help Cambodia to cover the areas where we have summarized above, and this will also create a direct support toward the rural community and creating more job opportunities for both men and women.

Thank you.