A hand up for Cambodia’s poor

August 2, 2010
Catholic News Asia

This Catholic Relief Services video features a microfinance project being carried out in Cambodia called “Thanakea Phum Cambodia” (TPC) - which means Village Bank Cambodia.

TPC gives small loans to motivated, hardworking people who want to support their families. This video, uploaded to YouTube in May, looks at how three beneficiaries changed their lives with help from the project.

Downturn Creates Uptick in Small Loans

By Ros Sothea, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
17 March 2009

The economic downturn has expanded the demand for micro-financing, but experts warn that a shrinking economy, job losses, and factory closures will not be saved by small loans.

Micro-finance loans, ranging from $50 to $10,000 are vital for Cambodians wanting to start their own businesses. In recent months, with factories struggling under the downturn, the number of people venturing into these enterprises has risen.

“Due to the global financial crisis, a lot of garment and construction workers have lost their jobs,” Huot Eang, president of the Cambodia Association of Microfinance Institutions, said in a recent interview. “They lose their income, and then they have to look for another career. Now they need the capital from our institutions for their new jobs.”

About 50,000 workers from garment and construction sectors have lost their jobs due to the global crisis, according to a February report by the International Labor Organization. Fourteen garment factories closed in the last two months, as export revenue dropped from $200 million to $100 million dollars per month, according to government figures.

Those numbers add up to worries of recession, in an economy that was galloping ahead in recent years. The International Monetary Fund has warned that the Cambodian economy will contract half a percent in 2009, compared to its growth of 6.7 percent in 2008.

But in the face of declining figures, total lending of micro-finance institutions in 2008, as the global financial crisis emerged, was $438, million, up from $271 million the year before, according to the Cambodia Association of Microfinance Institutions.

The increase of small lending in the microfinance industry could be good for Cambodia’s economic growth and poverty reduction, as it connect rural households to the formal financial sector, Eric Sidgwick, senior economic expert of the Asian Development Bank, said in an email.

But other economic experts worry small loans will make little impact against the slowdown of in the country’s economy, especially while medium-sized loans from many large commercial banks are reportedly in decline.

“Loans from micro-financing are too small, compared to our economy’s resources,” Som Ganty, a financial expert at the Royal University of Law and Economy, said recently. “So no matter how much it is going to increase, it will not help as much on our economy as commercial loans.”

Ngy Tayi, undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Economy and Finance, agreed, but he said he was optimistic that small loans could prevent Cambodia’s economy from further decline.

In Cambodia, microfinance program takes root

During a meeting of her local savings group, Seng Sreila checks the books. Seng took out loans to buy a rice mill, thresher, and plough. Now, she operates a small but expanding business in her village. (Inazio photo for Oxfam America)

June 3, 2008
By Andrea Perera
The Boston Globe (Massachusetts, USA)

By contributing just a few dollars, villagers grow a community fund -- and keep the interest

Andrea Perera, a resident of Roslindale, is a writer for Oxfam America, an international relief and development agency. Together with a small team from the organization’s communications and programs departments, she is traveling throughout Cambodia and Vietnam to collect stories about Oxfam’s work in the region.

PREY VENG, Cambodia -- Seng Sreila sits cross-legged on her concrete floor calculating the closing balance for her village savings group.

Leaning into the bamboo table, punching transactions into her calculator, she writes the numbers on a simple chart, detailing how much remains in the community fund after the loans to members to buy equipment, supplies, and food have all been paid out. Surrounded by bowls of lemongrass, dried catfish, and ginger, she fits her bookkeeping responsibilities in between working her rice fields and preparing meals, juggling all the tasks like your typical working mother.

But Seng is far from typical. I knew she was special when I met her more than a year ago. Back then, she had been introduced to me as “the rice mill lady.” She was famous at Oxfam America for taking maximum advantage of our savings-oriented microfinance program called Saving for Change. Not only had she contributed money to her local savings group. She had taken out a $50 loan, bought a rice mill, and used it to start a small business in her village.

When we came back to visit her again this week, she had just returned from working in her fields. Her face was flushed and wet with sweat. She looked busy, but in a good way. She told us she was still contributing money to her savings group and she was still taking out loans. In fact, those loans had helped expand her business. Now in addition to her rice mill, she operates a mechanical thresher and a plough.

In just a few years, she grew from a rice farmer, who depended on an outside lender, to a full service rice cultivation entrepreneur, who had taken out more than $670 in loans from the community fund.

Seng and her neighbors formed their “Happy Life Savings Group” -- “We called it that because even though we’re poor, we’re still happy,” Seng said -- under the tutelage of a local organization called the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture, or CEDAC. Funded by Oxfam, CEDAC has taught more than 42,000 Cambodians to take part in the community finance program. Together, they contribute a few dollars per month into savings, pooling that money so that they can hand out loans. They set their own interest rates, with the understanding that all the interest earned goes back into the community fund.

“Before, when we borrowed from money lenders, the interest belonged to them. Now it belongs to us,” said Happy Life Savings Group member, Choun Srey Mit.

In a country where 75 percent of families lack access to financial services, particularly the more than 10.5 million people who live on less than $2 a day, Saving for Change represents a good and practical option for investment.

Sitting in a half circle, under their community center’s thatched roof, the other members of the Happy Life Savings Group explained how participating in the community finance program had given them better opportunities. They are starting their own businesses, saving for their children’s educations, and paying for medicine and extra labor for their farms.

And having worked together to manage each other’s finances, they now feel a greater sense of solidarity and closeness with their neighbors. This is an important accomplishment since trust has been difficult to reestablish since the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge.

Now they turn to teaching their children the same skills. Seng’s own 14-year-old son, Mean Phoun Lok, is part of a Young Persons Savings Group. Mean contributes the money he makes selling fish and watering the fields. One day he wants to borrow enough to open up his own restaurant.

While his mother, Seng, can be shy when quantifying the practical changes since they began saving, Mean responds with the honesty only an adolescent could offer.

“Now we’re not lazy about what we do with our money,” he said. And because of that, “we eat better meals and can buy nicer clothes.”

For more information about Oxfam America and its work, please visit their website at www.oxfamamerica.org. For information on how you can contribute to the Passport blog, please contact the Globe's assistant foreign editor, Kenneth Kaplan, at K_Kaplan@globe.com.