News

• 30 August, 2024
• Posted by: EuroCham Cambodia

You have long been part of EuroCham, as an advocacy coordinator and now Chairman of the Automotive committee, where you represent RMA. What’s it like being a chairman of a committee and what do you hope to achieve during your tenure?

Yes, it’s exciting now that I’ve been elected as chairman again for my second term. What I like the most is, if we go back to 2-3 years ago this auto committee was not very active at all. Currently I can lead it in a way that everyone feels important and we have people that really want to join. 

I’m proud because we’ve been very active, people want to interact with this committee. My contribution to the committee is important from the private sector side, and we bring not only individual concerns of one company, but the collective concerns of an industry.

During the meetings, people raise concern and questions and if they receive enough support, we raise the issue with the government. We have good standing with the government as well – we pay a lot of taxes and we give a lot of people jobs, unlike unauthorized dealers. That’s what I love about driving this committee too, we are proud to offer good jobs to people and contribute to society in that way as well.

Congratulations on the launch of your new EV lineup! What is RMA’s plan for EVs?

We see that the EV Car market trend is going up. If we look at the last year, from January to July 2023, less than 1 percent of vehicles on the road were EVs, and from January to July this year, that has risen to 4 percent. We of course also want to contribute to emissions reductions.

In Cambodia, it’s about the infrastructure when it comes to EVs, it’s the chicken and egg situation. We don’t have much infrastructure yet. If you go somewhere far like Mondulkiri, it’s tough to find a charging station. During holiday, when people go their hometowns, they will need to stop to recharge their cars. The fastest charge available at the moment takes about 30 minutes. Now imagine if there’s two cars in front of you. Even if the gas station is packed, you can count on the line moving pretty quickly, but if there’s a bottleneck at a charging station outside the city, there’s simply not enough infrastructure to go around.

Another drawback is that most EV batteries last about 8 years, and it can cost about half the worth of the car to replace it, which no one would really do in practice. If you want to resell, no one really wants a used EV.

One of the biggest issues for the auto committee is the gray market. How is this issue progressing?

This is a key issue in the auto industry, as most of our members are impacted by the grey market. Companies have left the country because of this issue, including Mercedes Benz and Audi. The gray market importers bring in the vehicles, declare their value at a price far lower than their true value, and thus pay far less taxes. From the consumer’s side, they are suffering because they are getting inferior quality vehicles that are not authorized for resale by the manufacturer.

From a government point of view, restricting gray market imports will boost the domestic assembly sector by attracting more companies, while ensuring more tax revenue. We’re looking forward to working more on this issue!