Garment industry is important for a developing country like Cambodia. Garment work employs 400,000 people. Last year it led to export of $5 billion in goods, accounting for nearly a third of GDP . Companies from Korea and Greater China own many of the factories. There had been a long struggle going on for wage increase by the unions there – which resulted in minimum wages being increased 28% to $128 a month.
Denim is one of the important items of export from Cambodia to US market. However, is the share of denim in exports from Cambodia increasing or decreasing? We will try to find in this report the exports of denim apparel from Cambodia in the last 4 years ie from 2011 to 2014 . Also we will see how the prices for such exports have been moving during this time.
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Denim Exports To US From Cambodia|2011-2014
| 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | |
| Quantities (million pcs) |
20.54 | 17.54 | 15.58 | 15.52 |
| Price (US$/pc) | 8.61 | 8.32 | 8.48 | 8.46 |
From the above chart we can see that the exports of denim apparel to US have , in fact , fallen during the period 2011 to 2014. Whereas in 2011 over 20 million pcs of denim apparel were exported to the US, it fell to about 15.5 million pcs – a fall of about 25%. This would seem surprising as Cambodia is close to China and many of the factories are owned by Chinese . The increased costs in China should have led to increased orders for Cambodia.
However, when we look at the prices, we find that the prices are more or less stable in the last 4 years. Hovering between $8.3-$8.60 the prices have not taken much of a turn. But it would be interesting to note that the average price of denim exports from Cambodia is higher than average price of imports into US. The average price of denim apparel imports into US in 2013 was $8.10 against the price of $8.48 from Cambodia.
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