Cambodia's garment industry has recorded strong growth over the past four years, according to a report from Vietnamese state news agency VietnamPlus, signalling a sustained expansion of one of Asia's mid-tier sourcing destinations at a time when brands are reassessing regional supply chains.

The four-year growth record matters for sourcing teams on three fronts. First, it indicates that Cambodia's factory base has retained — and likely expanded — order volumes despite the post-pandemic demand correction that hit apparel suppliers across South and Southeast Asia. Second, it suggests the country has held its position as buyers diversified orders away from China and, more recently, monitored cost and compliance risks in Myanmar. Third, sustained volume growth typically supports upstream investment in spinning, knitting and finishing capacity, which shortens lead times for buyers placing fabric-forward programmes in the country.

Cambodia's garment, footwear and travel goods sector has historically served as the country's largest export earner and a major employer, with the industry concentrated in and around Phnom Penh and powered largely by foreign-invested factories, including significant Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Hong Kong ownership. Buyers sourcing from the country have long balanced its competitive labour costs and preferential access to the EU and other markets against structural constraints: relatively high logistics costs, dependence on imported fabric — largely from China — and wage floors set through the annual minimum-wage negotiation between the government, factory associations and unions.

For sourcing executives, the headline growth figure invites several questions before it translates into allocation decisions. The VietnamPlus report does not break out whether the growth reflects volume gains, price increases, or a recovery bounce from the pandemic-depressed base years at the start of the four-year window. It also does not specify which product categories drove the expansion — garment alone, or the broader apparel, footwear and travel goods cluster that Cambodia's official statistics typically group together.

Buyers will also want to know who captured the growth. If volume migrated from smaller local factories to large foreign-owned exporters, the supplier landscape may have consolidated, reducing the pool of mid-size vendors available for programmes that need dual sourcing or rapid capacity swaps. If growth spread across the factory base, capacity tightness and upward wage pressure could follow in the next bargaining rounds.

Compliance remains a fixed cost of sourcing from Cambodia. The country operates aexport scheme in which the EU links trade preferences to labour standards, and the ILO's Better Factories Cambodia programme conducts factory monitoring that many brands treat as a baseline audit layer. Any sustained expansion in volumes will draw scrutiny of whether overtime, subcontracting and worker-safety practices keep pace, particularly in newly opened or newly expanded facilities.

The competitive context is sharp. Vietnam, Bangladesh and Indonesia all court the same mid-market apparel orders, and each offers a different mix of fabric supply, port capacity and duty access. Cambodia's growth record suggests it is holding its ground in that contest rather than losing share — an outcome not guaranteed given the wage increases the sector has absorbed in recent years.

The report does not indicate whether the growth trend has continued into the current year, nor does it address the impact of upcoming shifts in US trade policy, which Cambodian exporters have flagged as a key uncertainty. Buyers planning 2025–2026 allocations will want to see whether the four-year trajectory holds as Cambodia's competitors ramp up capacity and as tariff conditions evolve. For now, the data point confirms Cambodia as a growing, rather than fading, option on Asian sourcing shortlists.