PHNOM PENH: Cambodia exported 5.81 billion U.S. dollars worth of goods to other Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) member countries in the first nine months of 2023, up 23.6 percent over the same period last year, said a Ministry of Commerce’s report released on Thursday.

During the January-September period this year, Cambodia’s top three export destinations under the RCEP agreement are Vietnam, China, and Japan, the report said.

The Southeast Asian country shipped products worth 2.03 billion dollars to Vietnam, up 30.6 percent; 1.06 billion dollars to China, up 18.2 percent; and 885.7 million dollars to Japan, down 1.3 percent, the report added.

The RCEP free trade deal comprises 15 Asia-Pacific countries including 10 ASEAN member states – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – and their five trading partners, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Cambodian Ministry of Commerce’s Secretary of State and Spokesman Penn Sovicheat said RCEP, which came into force in 2022, has been a catalyst for the kingdom’s export growth and has become a magnet to attract more foreign direct investment inflows to the ASEAN nation.

“The export growth indicated that the fellow RCEP countries are a potential market for made-in-Cambodia products,” he told Xinhua.

Sovicheat said that with preferential tariffs provided under the RCEP agreement, there’s no doubt that Cambodia’s exports to other RCEP members will continue to rise throughout this year and next years.

“RCEP, together with other bilateral free trade agreements, will help Cambodia graduate from its least developed country status by 2027 and achieve its goals of becoming an upper-middle income country by 2030 and a high-income nation by 2050,” he said.