LACK of funds has forced a fish sauce firm to stall plans for exporting to the US, a company director told the Post on Wednesday, but a government official said the failure was due to a lack of quality.

“We cannot export our product [fish sauce] this year because we lack the capital,” said Chan Sitha, director of Ngov Heng Fish Sauce Production Trey Koh Kampot Factory.

“We have built a factory, bought the machinery and other materials to produce the fish sauce. So, we don’t have enough capital reserves [to export],” he said.

Ngov Heng factory has 40 storage tanks that refine between 100,000 and 200,000 litres of fish sauce a month. The company had planned to export to the US this year after a successful market trial and survey in 2007.

Chan Sitha said the plans to send two containers, each containing 1,000 cases of the condiment, had been delayed.

The sauce was set to fill shelves in Los Angeles and San Francisco, he said. Each case, he said, contains 12 bottles of 750 ml each.

But Ministry of Mine and Energy’s director general of Industry and Secretariat of SMEs Meng Saktheara said he “strongly” believes the SMEs such

as the Ngov Heng factory could not export because of a lack of standards and insufficient documentation. He said the ministry is ready to help the Cambodian SMEs reach export standards.