Cambodia Import Trade Data: $24.41B in 2023, Down 18.5%

China Dominates Cambodia's Import Supply Chain

Cambodia imported $24.41 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 18.5% from $29.94 billion the year before, the steepest year-over-year drop across the five years this dataset covers. China supplied 44.2% of that total, worth $10.78 billion, more than the combined value of the next eight partners on the list. Vietnam ranked second at 14.7% ($3.59 billion), and Thailand followed at 11.9% ($2.90 billion). Together, China, Vietnam, and Thailand, the top three suppliers, account for 70.7% of everything Cambodia imports, a striking degree of concentration built almost entirely within Asia's own manufacturing corridors rather than spread across more distant markets.

Indonesia took fourth place at 4.1% ($995.34 million), just ahead of Singapore at 3.8% ($939.36 million). An aggregated "Other Asia, nes" reporting category, covering trade partners not broken out individually in the underlying data, added 2.7% ($661.33 million). Japan followed at 2.6% ($624.53 million), Malaysia at 2.2% ($527.80 million), and South Korea at 1.9% ($469.83 million). Hong Kong SAR China closed out the top ten at 1.3% ($328.44 million). Every one of these ten suppliers sits within East or Southeast Asia, a regional concentration far tighter than what shows up on Cambodia's export side, where the United States, an ocean away, is the single largest buyer. That contrast is typical of an assembly-driven economy: components and materials travel short regional supply chains to reach Cambodian factories, while the finished products those factories produce travel much further to reach the consumer markets that ultimately pay for them.

Raw Materials for a Garment and Assembly Economy

Mineral fuels led all import categories in 2023, worth $3.39 billion and accounting for 13.9% of total value. Close behind, fabrics that are knitted or crocheted ranked second at 10.6% ($2.60 billion), and man-made staple fibres added another 4.5% ($1.10 billion) further down the list. Research on Cambodia's textile sector notes that the country's garment factories operate mainly under a cut-make-pack model, importing raw materials, largely fabric, from China, Hong Kong, and other regional suppliers, then assembling finished garments for export rather than manufacturing textiles domestically. That pattern lines up closely with both the heavy concentration of import partners in East and Southeast Asia and the export side of Cambodia's trade profile, where finished apparel is the single largest category sold abroad.

Electrical machinery and equipment ranked third among import categories at 6.5% ($1.58 billion), followed by vehicles at 5.5% ($1.35 billion) and machinery and mechanical appliances at 5.3% ($1.31 billion), a mix of components and capital equipment consistent with an economy built around assembling finished goods rather than producing them from scratch. Plastics added 4.4% ($1.07 billion), chemical products 4.0% ($986.37 million), and aluminium 2.5% ($615.19 million), rounding out a list dominated almost entirely by industrial inputs rather than consumer goods. Cotton closed out the top ten at 2.3% ($561.99 million), a smaller but complementary fiber source alongside the man-made staple fibres higher up the list, both feeding the same textile and garment supply chain that shows up as Cambodia's leading export category.

A Sharp Pullback After a Record 2022

Cambodia's import total has swung more than its export total over the same five years. It stood at $20.28 billion in 2019, dipped slightly to $19.11 billion in 2020, then jumped to $25.20 billion in 2021 and further to a five-year high of $29.94 billion in 2022, before falling back 18.5% to $24.41 billion in 2023. The scale of that 2022 peak coincided with a period when global fuel and raw material prices spiked well above prior levels, inflating the cost of the same physical volume of imported inputs, and the pullback that followed in 2023 suggests import spending has since eased back toward a more sustainable trend rather than continuing to climb indefinitely alongside export growth.

That volatility on the import side, paired with a much steadier climb in exports over the same period, points to a trade profile where Cambodia absorbs the swings in global commodity and input costs on the way in, while its finished-goods export earnings, concentrated in garments and increasingly electronics, have held a more consistent upward path over the same stretch of years. For a closer look at how individual partner countries or product categories break down year over year, the data panels above provide the full detail behind these figures.