Cambodia's micro-loan disbursement rises 33 percent in 2010

via CAAI

Tuesday, 25 January 2011 07:51 dap-news .PHNOM PENH, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's micro-lenders reported 33 percent growth of loan disbursement in 2010 thanks to better business environment after the slowdown in 2009.

The Kingdom's 23 microfinance institutions had lent 647 million U.S. dollars in 2010, 33 percent rise from 485 million U.S. dollars in 2009, according to the statistics released by Cambodian Micro Finance Association (CMA) on Tuesday.

The figure has been collected from the 22 MFIs in Cambodia and included the small loans of 222 million U.S. dollars disbursed by ACLEDA bank.

The number of borrowers has increased by 38 percent to 1.2 million in 2010 from 878,559 in 2009.

Meanwhile, non-performing loans, defined as loan repayments that are at least 30 days overdue, fell to 1.29 percent or 8.3 million U.S. dollars in 2010 from 2.86 percent or 8.5 million U.S. dollars a year earlier.

Chea Phalarin, president of CMA, said Tuesday that the increasing trend of loan demands started in mid last year and it's expected to continue to rise this year.

"We observed that the demand of loans for small businesses has been picked up sharply since mid-2010," he said.

"This reflected well growth of economic recovery last year after the impact from the crisis in 2008 and 2009."