Since the early this month until now, the rice price is remarkably increasing in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh residents have been buying and stocking rice. All type of rice price is increasing too fast and making Cambodian people worried. The price of rice is going up across the nation by more than 20 percent, comparing to the previous year.

Rising the rice price is helping the farmers but it is hitting badly the poor such as garment workers, teachers, civil servants who have low-income. By the way, their monthly wage does not balance to inflation at the present.

The increase of rice price is because those Vietnamese and Thai vendors are buying rice from farmers at high price by competition.

Cheam Yeap, CPP lawmaker, was quoted by The Mekong Times as saying that:

Cambodia’s free trade market means authorities cannot ban people selling rice to overseas dealers who offer higher prices. He added that “if farmers sell at a high price, we should congratulate them because it will help offset the high prices of fuel and other necessities.”

The increase of rice does not mean that it will help all the poor, the fact is that, it is suffering teachers, military, police, garment workers, and the poor.

The increase in selling farmland is making the rice production down. Kit Seng, director of the planning department of the ministry of agriculture was cited by ChinaNews as saying that:

“Then farmers will find it more difficult to afford food.” Adding that “I would like to appeal to farmers not to sell their land because this will cause a shortage of farmland and it will drive rice prices up, which will be a burden on the country.”

Even though, the government official still claimed that there will not be shortage of rice in the future because the government have plan to stockpile rice in order to better control the supply and thereby stabilize the price.

The Trading Market reported that the Planning Ministry’s National Institute of Statistics (NIS) will held the Agriculture Census in the second half of 2009 in order to collect the agricultural-related data from 2008. The census will focus on agriculture land, crop fields, livestock and various type of forest land.

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