Sung Bonna (L) attends ASEAN Property Evaluators Association Workshop in Brunei. Photograph: supplied

Cambodia’s Property Evaluator Association President Sung Bonna says he believes that Cambodia will attract more investors in the ASEAN region area into the Kingdom.

Sung Bonna, who is also the director of Bonna Realty Group, said that during last week’s four-day ASEAN Property Evaluators Association Workshop, in Brunei, he had shared information about the current status of Cambodia’s property market with a lot of other participants, in order to lobby them to invest in the Kingdom.

The workshop was beneficial, he added, because Cambodian participants had gained additional expertise regarding the standard and quality of property evaluation.

“Cambodia is regarded as the youngest son in the sector; therefore, we need to continually strengthen our performance of property evaluation, conforming to the [highest] standards and quality,” he said, adding that the workshop had been attended by major countries in the sector, including the UAE, Australia, China and Hong Kong, whereas Laos and Myanmar had participated as observers since they had not yet been granted full membership.

The Cambodia’s Property Evaluators Association won full membership of the association three years ago, and each member pays $500 as an annual membership fee, he said, adding that next workshop is set to take place in Singapore and the 2014 workshop is slated to be in Vietnam.

CEA Realtor CEO Sen Chanreatrey said Cambodian engagement with the ASEAN Associations stemmed from seeing the useful benefits in being part of the organisation, which could help promote Cambodia to meet international standards, as well as to establish a common ASEAN standard, as some of the countries already had the quality standard in place.

“In the future, we would have an internationally-recognized standard, but for this early step, we need to train our human resources because their knowledge is limited,” he said. “Attending such workshops is very crucial as we can show off the progress of the Kingdom’s property sector and economy in order to attract more investors into our country.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Siv Meng at [email protected]