Cambodia shipped abroad 84,330 tonnes of rice in the first quarter of this year, a year-on-year drop of 11 percent, the country’s Secretariat of One Window Service for Rice Export has reported.

According to the data released by the secretariat, 59 Cambodia rice exporters have exported their product to 46 countries around the world, mainly France, Poland, the Netherlands, Malaysia and China.

President of the Federation of Cambodian Rice Exporter Kim Savuth said there were declines in purchase orders from some customers in European countries during the first three months of the year.

He further said that the price of fragrant rice had also decreased to 820 USD per tonne this year from 900 USD last year.

With more than 80 percent of the population being farmers, Cambodia produced about 9.38 million tonnes of paddy rice last year. Of the amount, more than 3 million tonnes of milled rice were left over for this year’s export, in addition to local consumptions.

The country expects to export one million tonnes of rice a year from 2015. Last year, it exported around 379,000 tonnes of the grain, a year-on-year hike of 84 percent.-VNA