“Khmer Label Is Not Enough”

Guest on the “Fresh Business” show, Dr. Hay Ly Eang, CEO of PPM and founder of Confirel, analyzed the effects of massive imports of foreign products on domestic production and called for a much more structured policy to support Cambodian value chains.

Asked about the wave of boycotts of Thai products and the renewed interest in domestic products, Dr. Hay immediately points out the ambivalence of the phenomenon. According to him, this mobilization has stimulated demand for “Khmer” products, but has also encouraged practices of simple relabeling.

“Yes, some products are genuinely 100% Cambodian and enjoy massive consumer support,” he explains. “But others are merely imported products, repackaged with a Khmer label, or partial assemblies. In the end, when we talk about Khmer products, we need to ask what is really inside them.”

For the founder of Confirel, the weakness of the national production apparatus has its roots in recent history. Since the 1990s, domestic demand has exploded while industrial infrastructure, destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime, had not been rebuilt at the same pace. “We responded to this demand through imports, mainly from Thailand and Vietnam, which themselves carried out deep reforms of their economies.”

Local content rules still unclear

From a legal standpoint, Dr. Hay calls for a clarification of the rules that allow a product to be described as “made in Cambodia”.

“If we take Boeing or Airbus,” he says, “their aircraft incorporate components from several countries, but the legal framework precisely defines the share of local content. Do we have this type of rule in Cambodia? And if so, are they actually enforced?” For him, this is a prerequisite if we are to both encourage domestic production and guarantee transparency for consumers.

The issue is not to eliminate imports, he acknowledges, but to move away from generalized opacity: “We must at least know what proportion of a product is imported, and ensure that its quality has been checked. The primary objective remains to meet the needs of the population while guaranteeing product safety. This presupposes traceable supply chains and credible control capacities.”

Pooling control capacities

Asked about Cambodia’s capacity to control the quality and volumes of imports, Dr. Hay believes that the country already has levers at its disposal, provided that the various stakeholders are better coordinated.

“Today, our resources remain limited, but we can already start doing much better. We have several laboratories – Institut Pasteur, Labiocert, ministerial laboratories – which all too often work in silos. If we pool these capacities, we will be able to cover a significant part of the testing needs. The rest can be entrusted to top‑level foreign laboratories.”

In his view, the main problem is not technical but political: “What has long been lacking is the will to bring order to the system. Once that will is there, it becomes possible to organize a genuine control system, with analyses recognized by national authorities and international partners.”

Towards genuine national value chains

Beyond controls, Dr. Hay stresses the need to build genuine national value chains, from production to processing, for emblematic products such as palm sugar, Kampot pepper, cassava or mango.

He recalls that Confirel has opted for rigorous traceability when it comes to palm sugar: “When you know precisely where each liter of sap comes from, you can also measure market inconsistencies: if we collect only a few hundred tonnes of raw material and yet we see thousands of tonnes of ‘palm sugar’ on the shelves, it means that a large share is not authentic.”

For Dr. Hay, the challenge is therefore twofold: to protect consumers and give domestic production the means to develop in a fairer environment. “We will never replace all imports,” he concludes, “but we can build solid, transparent national value chains, capable of offering genuine Khmer products whose origin and quality we know.”