Cambodia bought roughly 721 million dollars less from Thailand in the first seven months of this year than in the same months of 2025. Over those same seven months it bought about 4.81 billion dollars more from everywhere else. That is roughly seven times the fall.
Both numbers are worked out from one series, published by the General Department of Customs and Excise, the customs service that reports Cambodian trade partner by partner. Imports from Thailand ran at 1,911.3 million dollars from January to July last year. The figure of about 1,190 million for the same months this year comes from Khmer Times in August and Nikkei in September, both crediting it to the department.
The total bill went the other way, from 19.160 to 23.250 billion dollars. That is a rise of 4.09 billion, or 21.4 per cent on the department’s own published rate. Take the Thai line out of each end and the rest of the bill rises by about 4.81 billion.
Thailand’s share of that bill fell from 9.98 per cent to 5.12. These are merchandise totals, so they cover fuel, machinery, raw materials and factory inputs as well as anything that reaches a shop.
At least four things could produce a fall that size, and no published figure divides it between them. There is the consumer boycott of Thai goods that became visible in August 2025. There is the Cambodian ban on Thai fuel and produce. There is the closed land border, which pushed Thai cargo onto ships or through Laos at higher cost. And there is what was in the flow to begin with.
Thailand’s own trade figures put precious stones and metals and mineral fuels at the top of what it sent, and the Cambodian series does not break its Thai line down by commodity.
The state measures all came before the boycott became visible. Thailand closed border crossings on 7 June 2025. Cambodia restricted imports of Thai vegetables and fruit from 17 June, and its prime minister ordered fuel and gas imports suspended on 22 or 23 June. A customs notice of 16 July put the ban in writing, and says in its opening line that it updates a list already running. Fighting on the border began on 24 July 2025.
A figure has been circulating alongside all this. Te Taingpor is president of the Federation of Association for Small and Medium Enterprises of Cambodia, a private membership body. He told Nikkei Cambodian products were about 2 to 3 per cent of the total nationwide and are now about 30 per cent, putting that baseline before 2025. In April he put the 2 per cent twenty years ago, and described the 30 per cent as a share of the domestic market. Neither account says how the share was measured, or by which office.
The counts that do come from a government office measure something narrower than they sound. The Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation registered 1,336 products in 2023, 2,158 in 2024, 3,625 in 2025 and 2,353 in the first five months of this year. The 2024 rise, of 61.5 per cent, came a full year before any of the border trouble.
Product registration is a labelling procedure, run by the Institute of Standards of Cambodia under Cambodia Standard CS001-2000. It gives a product an identification for its label. It is a licence to label, not a licence to manufacture, and the count measures labels.
It is also open to importers. The ministry’s registration campaign offers the same graduated discount to producers and to importers: 10 per cent off for five to nineteen products, 15 per cent for twenty to forty-nine, and 20 per cent for more than fifty. The campaign runs from 27 October 2025 to the end of 2026. One count covers both, and the ministry has not published a split.
Two Cambodian producers told Nikkei that goods made outside the country and sold under Cambodian labels are taking their sales.
The factory numbers run the other way. The ministry counts 700 large factories opened in 2025, against 326 in 2024 and 241 in 2023, with 42 closures. The operating stock went from 2,425 to 3,083. Large factory is the ministry’s own register category, and it has not published the definition it uses.
It puts 25.168 billion dollars of capital behind that stock, of which 3.906 billion, which the ministry rounds to 15 per cent, is domestic. A 2025 opening also rests on a decision taken and a building finished earlier, and the annual count spans six months before the July fighting and six months after.
The ministry can go on publishing every count it publishes now. Saying them costs it the word Cambodian, because the campaign offers the same discount to importers as to producers and one figure covers both. It costs the factory numbers the word domestic, because the capital behind them is 3.906 billion dollars out of 25.168 billion. Te Taingpor can go on saying about 30 per cent. He would then have to say which of his two baselines he means, having given them five months apart, and how a share like that is measured.
Thailand’s Department of Foreign Trade is the trade measures arm of its commerce ministry. In August 2025 it said many Thai exporters had switched to sea freight, and that most Thai products were back on Cambodian shelves. That was before any of the months these figures cover. Its measure, like Cambodia’s, is what crosses a border rather than what sits on a shelf.
The vice president of the Cambodia Logistics Association told Nikkei the shift to local goods is still too small to replace all imports.
Milk is the one sector with numbers moving on both sides at once. Kirisu Farm’s deputy sales and marketing manager says Cambodian companies can supply about a quarter of the milk market, and the farm took 200 more cows from Australia in July to reach a herd of 1,400. In the last quarter of 2025, milk imports rose year on year from 0.4 million dollars to 6.3 million from Indonesia, from about 0.2 million to 4.7 million from Vietnam, and from 2.5 million to 4.2 million from Australia. The farm that would be the largest in the country is a Malaysian investment: Farm Fresh is putting 68 million dollars into 1,000 hectares in Pursat.