However, investment in tourism industry requires software to run, including high-end chefs to work hotel and restaurant kitchens. But top chefs able to serve world-class cuisine to discerning tourists have always been hard to come by, says Pierre Tami, who arrived in Cambodia as a diplomat in 1990.

The EIF recognises that our contribution to creating a thriving e-commerce ecosystem in LDCs is part and parcel of a bigger effort bringing together the expertise and skills of many others. While some are working together with the private sector, including small businesses, others are working with governments. While some invest in building digital infrastructure, others impart knowledge to build digital skills and yet others provide support to prepare and implement e-commerce policies.

LDCs have traditionally relied on high-cost, low-impact means of showing off their goods by, for example, hiring booths at trade shows and expos. Ecommerce platforms allow them to exponentially grow the number of products they can show off to potential customers, simplify the selling process, reduce transactional costs, increase trade revenues, and boost economic growth.

Resilience is necessary in the rice trade, developing it requires many About 80% of Cambodians are rural farmers, and rice is the country’s main crop. But, until the last decade or so, the sector had not been living up to its potential.

Expanding and diversifying productive capacities will better position least developed countries (LDCs) to tap the financing and e-trade opportunities that will underpin their Covid-19 recovery. This was a recurrent theme in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Least Developed Countries Report 2020, which cautioned however that the international community must first rally with resources, policy space and better international support measures.

Tourism, apparel and sustainable development strategies are covered in new series of policy briefs from the Enhanced Integrated Framework

Photo: An apparel worker at a garment factory that reopened amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Academy training youth for a global trade

An uptick in business, especially in the delivery of food and essential items, is enhancing resilience in the wake of the crisis.

COVID-19 is highlighting the need for paperless trade in developing countries; a recent assessment offers recommendations for how to start

Countries that have already implemented trade-cost reducing reforms – for example trade facilitation, infrastructure, and data flows – will be better positioned to take advantage of any opportunities that arise from the trade war.

During UNCTAD’s Ecommerce Week in April 2019, Deputy Director General for International Trade at the Cambodia Ministry of Commerce talks all things e-trade

Improving economic opportunities and prospects for the world’s least developed countries remains a key global challenge

The year is 2017 and Cambodia has stepped into a role that has been out of its reach for years — the voice of the 47 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) at the Word Trade Organization.

Meet a young woman from Cambodia who received silk production training through an EIF project