New Monthly Minimum Wage for Cambodia's Garment Industry in 2024 Takes Effect
Workers leave a garment factory for lunch in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Sept. 27, 2023. Photo by Phearum/Xinhua
- By Xinhua News Agency
- January 3, 2024 9:50 AM
PHNOM PENH -- A new monthly minimum wage for workers in Cambodia's garment, textile, footwear, and travel products industry for 2024 has come into force, Prime Minister Hun Manet said on Tuesday.
The new minimum wage is 204 U.S. dollars per month, an increase of 4 dollars from December 2023, according to a text released on the prime minister's official Telegram channel.
The announcement came after the National Council for Minimum Wage decided in September to raise the monthly minimum wage for the sector to 204 dollars, taking effect from January 1, 2024.
The garment, textile, footwear and travel goods industry is the largest foreign exchange earner for the Southeast Asian nation, consisting of about 1,300 factories and branches with some 840,000 workers, mostly females.
The country exported products worth 9.9 billion dollars during the first 11 months of 2023, down 15 percent from nearly 11.7 billion dollars in the same period last year, according to a report from the Ministry of Commerce.
Ministry of Commerce's Secretary of State and Spokesman Penn Sovicheat said key buyers of these products are the European Union, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, among others.
"Global economic slowdown, particularly in the European Union, has led to a decline in our exports of garment, textile, footwear and travel products," he told Xinhua.
