On 15 January 2013, a group of 28 delegates from Japanese manufacturing companies paid a visit to the Council for the Development of Cambodia. Mr. Shintaro Ishijima,
Chairperson of Asia Professional Education Network (APEN) and Mr. Hidetoshi Nishimura, Executive Director of Economic Research Institute of ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) who co-organized the event called APEN Cambodia Mission briefed H.E SOK Chenda Sophea on Japanese manufacturers’ interest to seek opportunity to expand their production bases in South East Asian countries. They emphasized that Cambodia is the most potential one.

The members of the delegation are Presidents or Chairmen of 12 small and medium companies specializing in different fields. Each of the company’s representatives took a chance to brief to H.E SOK Chenda Sophea their company’s technologies and areas of expertise, and their interest to set up a new production base in Cambodia. They raised that the setting up of their factories in Cambodia will not only increase employment in the country, but will also contribute more to human capacity development among Cambodian youth by absorbing interns to their companies.

In response, Minister SOK Chenda Sophea expressed his welcome to the delegation and assured that CDC will support their intention to invest in this emerging country. He also stressed that Cambodia has many potentials and open investment policies as well as lucrative investment incentives that foreign investors cannot find anywhere else in the region. He also noted that Cambodia is like some of these SMEs that started up their business from the very basic technologies because Cambodia is in need of these technologies to develop its industrial sectors.
In his closing remark, H.E SOK Chenda Sophea thanked the APEN and ERIA Presidents for their concerted effort to arrange this mission in Cambodia and that CDC will wait to welcome them in the near future.
