Brief Research Experience

SUMMERY OF RESEAR EXPERIENCES OF TARP PROJECT SUPPORTED BY AUSAID in 2007 Prepared by Mr. Chan Bonnivoit, Deputy Bureau Chief of World Trade organization, Ministry of Commerce, Cambodia TARP Regional Seminar on Research on International Trade Monday 12th May 2008, Siem Reap

The Process of the research At the beginning, the researchers nominated by the Ministry met our technical senior officials and supervisor to discus about our research topic and those objectives and table contents which will be took to present and consult with the trainers and the mentor during in-Country briefing course. In-Country briefing course, some part of the table contents drafted were yet modified base on the opinion and the advice of the trainers and the mentors. But the modified draft is not finish, because it depends on the primary data and secondary data that we have or can research from the institutions and the informants concerned. Besides, base on the financial support and the timeframe we drafted also our research work plan with the mentor and the trainers in order to coordinate our research’s activities. After finalizing the research plan and the table contents accorded to the objectives of the research topic, the formulation of the questionnaires and the literatures search are very significantly in our research process. But some literature’s sources and the way to find the literature and information were provided yet by the trainers and the mentor during the regional workshop as well through the e-mail’s exchange. Although we have the questionnaires formulating base on our table contents and for conducting of the interview, but conducting of the interview started with the standard as well with open-ended questions and added yet new questions during the conducting of the interview. The aim is to allow and to encourage the informants and the institutions to describe his/her experience in own word relating to our research topic. Data analysis is the important step before the report writing, because the interviews are transcribed and "meaning units" are identified. These are organized into higher-order themes and, finally, over-arching themes which can be took as the key finding and also the arguments for the policy’s recommendation in the report. Therefore, consultation and clarification by the mentor and the trainers in the regional progress

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workshop are useful and meaningful for the research team to synthesize our analysis. Reporting is the difficulty job for the research team, because themes identified by data analysis are used to construct or describe the structure of the research in a way that is faithful and understandable for the readers. But through the meeting and regularly consultation with the mentor and trainers in the last Country workshop and by e-mail, themes, examples, and frequencies are used, and inferential statistics are usually useful. Implications of the data, e.g., for care-giving or policy-making, are given also in the report. Before the dissemination workshop we have the cross-checking of the report. The report is confirmed by showing it to the mentor and our senior officials who have had experiences and do “experts” know a lot of this issue. After recognizing the report by these people, the key finding and the policy’s recommendations are presented to the people and the institutions concerned during the dissemination workshop.

The advantage from the research Through the research we can improve our research’s capacity and quality that relate to formulating of the table contents accorded to the objectives of the research, to designing of the research work plan and to conducting the interview. Our research team has had really an ability to understand and write the English language, but in this research we faced some difficulty relating to formulate the English sentences for the report in a way that is faithful and understandable for the readers, because of using technical word and phrase. But with the supporting and correcting from the trainers and mentor we gained some knowledge regarding to the writing skill in order to improve in writing the report. Our presentation’s skill is also improved during the research period, because in every workshop we should find and raise the critical issues of our research in order to present, to clarify and to consult with the mentor, trainers and other researchers to get the feedback. The presentation skill gained is very significant to help us to improve the presentation’s quality of our research at a dissemination seminar in which it can be accepted by the participants in term of technique and artificially presentation. In other hand, by the regional and regional progress workshop we can exchange the research’s experiences between the researchers who come from different Country and have the valuable experiences relating to the quality and quantity’s research. It is pricey knowledge for us to strengthen our research capacity and experiences.

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Although the TARP project sounds as a training, but the information, the results and the experiences from the research are precious for us as official having the responsibility relating to this trade’s issues and perhaps as discussion paper for our Ministry leading currently Cambodian trade policy.

Constraints occurred in the research The analytical skills that are lacking in Cambodia have existed also for our research team, because more analytical reflection is required strongly in this research. A strategy for developing research capacity is required-it will not just happen without planning. It can be improved in a number of ways-training, degrees or partnerships with overseas research organizations. The access to the data, including the conducting of the interview, was also the problem for the research team. In Cambodia, it is trouble to find the capacious library that we can search the literatures or data that we want to use for the research reference. The alternative way to find the data is searching data in internet. But usually, it can be faced a constraint by the download of the data, because we used only the private internet shop having always low capacity in receiving the data by the download. On the other hand, at the interview, though we used not only standard, we faced for some time the constraints to get the answers that is fitting and opened in order to take sufficiently for the analysis, because it seems as “a answer with a standard”. The financial support’s delay is also the constraint which can bring the research into non-motivation and inefficiency. In particular, it is one of the reasons that the research work plan can be delayed.

The political options arising from the research Changes required - Continue to undertake an effectively work and managements involved in land reforms (social and economic land concessions). - Consider to liberalize land use and land ownership for foreign investors. - Promote using of organic rice production and appropriate using of non-organic fertilizer rice production. - Strongly support to establish the farm community which easier to transfer the modern technology and the information, and to facilitate the market. - Establish regional training and research institutions. - Attract and convince all kinds of the financial investments and direct investments into agricultural sector. - Continue to maintain tax exemption on used land, farmer income tax and agricultural input tax. - Accelerate irrigation system and infrastructure development.

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Promoting private suppliers in generating and making available low cost electricity. Promote fair competitions and take action to implement the SPS and TBT regulations. To stop formal and informal export of paddy rice. Continue to negotiate bilateral– and multilateral to open the market and to get the GSP.

Positive impacts of using policy option rose - Getting effective farmer community easier to contact in term of development processes and doing marketing of their rice products - Increasing the productivities of the rice production. - Creating the jobs - Expanding the market accesses and increasing the volume of rice export - Expanding the investments in this sector Negative impacts using policy option rose - Difficult to adopt the new technology because our farmers still face limited knowledge - Distorting the informal and formal paddy rice exporters - Farmers lost opportunity in price competition - Loss of the state revenue because of tax exemptions - Government spend a lot of budget on the development of irrigation and infrastructure systems - Poor farmers can lost of land rice production More information or more research required - Research the ability to attract the investments for rice sector - Research on economic comparative advantage between the producing of organic and non-organic rice. - Research for effective marketing to promote the rice export. - Research to compare the economic benefits of exporting paddy and milled rice.

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