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The Third Meeting of the India-Cambodia Joint Working Group on Trade and Investment (JWGTI) was held on 24 August 2026 in Phnom Penh, co-chaired by Shri Amit Verma, Joint Secretary, Department of Commerce, and Mr. Long Kemvichet, Director General of International Trade, Ministry of Commerce, Cambodia.
Bilateral trade grew by over 36 per cent to USD 406.78 million in 2025-26 from USD 299 million the previous year, with the April-June 2026 quarter recording a further 63.25 per cent year-on-year growth; Cambodia is India's 8th largest trading partner in ASEAN and accounts for 0.31 per cent of India's trade with the bloc.
The two sides welcomed the launch of UPI acceptance at KHQR-enabled merchants in Phnom Penh on 2 June 2026 and discussed the next phase letting Cambodian apps scan UPI QR codes in India, agreed on an MoU on Customs Cooperation and pushed for early signature of a Bilateral Investment Treaty; the next JWGTI meeting will be held in India in 2027.
A Joint Working Group is an institutionalised, officials-level bilateral forum - here at Joint Secretary and Director General level - that meets periodically, alternating between the two capitals, to identify and clear practical obstacles to trade and investment. It is not a negotiating forum for a free trade agreement and it signs nothing by itself; its output is agreed agendas, technical cooperation and preparation of instruments such as an MoU on Customs Cooperation or a Bilateral Investment Treaty for signature at the political level. That is why this release records issues 'agreed', 'welcomed' and 'discussed for early signature' rather than concluded. A Bilateral Investment Treaty, by contrast, is a binding agreement protecting investors of each country in the other - India has been renegotiating its treaties on the template of its 2015 Model BIT, which requires an investor to exhaust local remedies before international arbitration.
Simple Analogy: The JWG is the working committee that clears the paperwork and fixes the plumbing; the ministers cut the ribbon later. Its value is that it meets on a fixed cycle whether or not there is news, so problems do not wait for a summit.
The ten-member Southeast Asian grouping with which India has a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and the AITIGA trade agreement; Cambodia is one of its members and India's 8th largest trading partner within it
Cooperation initiative in tourism, culture, education, and transport and communications, named after the Ganga and the Mekong to signal the civilisational link between India and mainland Southeast Asia
The international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India, which took UPI to Cambodia in partnership with ACLEDA Bank through Bakong's KHQR, Cambodia's national QR code standard
India's principal heritage conservation agency, which has carried India's cultural diplomacy in Cambodia - it worked on Angkor Wat from 1986 to 1993 and has led restoration of the Ta Prohm temple complex, where roughly 150 large trees grow over the structures, across successive phases
Cambodia sits in mainland Southeast Asia, bordered by Thailand to the west and north-west, Laos to the north-east and Vietnam to the east and south-east, with a coastline on the Gulf of Thailand. Its capital, Phnom Penh, stands at the confluence where the Mekong meets the Tonle Sap river. The Mekong rises on the Tibetan Plateau and runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before reaching the South China Sea - the river that gives the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation half its name. The Angkor temple complex, in Siem Reap province and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, is where the Archaeological Survey of India has done its conservation work.
The Cambodia linkage follows UPI's QR-code tie-ups elsewhere and works the same way in reverse: phase one lets Indian travellers scan Cambodia's KHQR, phase two would let Cambodian apps scan UPI QR codes in India - the same two-way corridor model used in other UPI cross-border links.
The BIT the two sides want signed would follow India's post-2015 template, which narrows the definition of investment, drops most-favoured-nation treatment and requires exhaustion of local remedies before investor-state arbitration.
Cambodia's recognition of the Indian Pharmacopoeia - the official book of drug standards published by the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare - is a standing instrument of India's pharmaceutical export diplomacy; several countries have granted it.
Rules of origin, one of the eight AITIGA sub-committee subjects, decide whether a good genuinely originates in a partner country and so qualifies for concessional duty - India's core concern in the AITIGA review is misuse of the route for third-country goods.
GS Paper 2 > International Relations > Regional Groupings and Bilateral Relations
General Awareness > UPI and Cross-Border Payments
General Awareness > International Organisations and Current Affairs
General Awareness > Current Affairs
ASEAN groupings, India's regional initiatives and UPI's international linkages recur across Prelims and banking general awareness.
ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement, in force since 2010, currently under review through a Joint Committee and eight sub-committees.
Cambodia's national QR code standard, run on the Bakong system of the National Bank of Cambodia, with which UPI was linked in June 2026.
A binding agreement protecting investors of each signatory in the other's territory; India renegotiates its treaties on the Model BIT of 2015.
Six-nation initiative of India, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam launched at Vientiane on 10 November 2000 for cooperation in tourism, culture, education and transport.