Cambodian Ministry of Commerce and China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the development of bilateral trade.

The MoU was inked between Cambodian Minister of Commerce Cham Prasidh and Wan Jifei, visiting chairman of CCPIT and president of China Chamber of International Commerce.

Speaking before the signing ceremony, Cham Prasidh said the agreement will be useful for Cambodia to strengthen and expand trade cooperation with China.

"As Cambodia and China have good relations in all levels ranging from the two countries' governments to business people and people, I believe that Cambodia and China will be able to achieve the bilateral trade volume of 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2012," he said.

The minister has suggested China to help encourage Chinese investors and people to purchase Cambodian agricultural products such as rice, corn, cassava and rubber in order to fulfill the expected trade target in 2012.

Meanwhile, Wan Jifei said that the two countries' cooperation in terms of trade and investment has a lot of room to grow.

He added that through the agreement, the CCPIT will encourage more Chinese investors to come to Cambodia, and will arrange more meetings between the two countries' business people, and will organize trade fairs in China or in Cambodia.

Wan Jifei stressed that currently, the exports of Cambodian products to China are done mostly by the third country such as Vietnam or Thailand. "This is the reason that Cambodia's exports to China are far fewer than those China's exports to Cambodia because the third country buys products from Cambodia and exports to China,"he said, adding "so, to re-balance the two countries' trade, it's necessary that Cambodian and Chinese business people have to meet more often in order to bridge direct trade between the two countries."