Banking and financial services

The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) recently decided to shrink the tax burden for local microfinance institutions (MFIs) by lowering withholding tax on interest from loans acquired from abroad from 14 to 10 percent, a move that the government claims will keep the massive ...

The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) will open a museum on finance and monetary matters in January 2018, a representative of the central bank has announced. ...

With trade and investment between Cambodia and China steadily increasing, Chinese currency-backed settlements for cross-border commerce have sharply taken off as the Kingdom continues to deepen its economic dependency on the northern giant, a central bank official said yesterday. ...

The government has already provided $9 million from its emergency rice loan fund to the Kingdom’s rice millers since the harvest season began in September, nearly triple the amount it provided when it first launched the initiative last year when millers showed little appetite for ...

The central bank officially held a soft launch last Friday for its central shared switch mechanism, which connects account records of three of the Kingdom’s leading financial institutions, allowing them to operate ATM and point-of-sale (POS) terminals in tandem. ...

Commercial lenders have said the central bank’s requirement that banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs) increase the share of local currency in their loan portfolio to at least 10 percent by the end of 2019 could prove challenging to implement as their biggest clients exhibit a ...

While financial technology, or fintech, has made little traction so far in Cambodia, panellists at a conference in Phnom Penh on Friday expressed confidence that the sector was poised for rapid growth.​ ...

The state-run Rural Development Bank (RDB) received a total of 10 proposals from Cambodian agricultural firms expressing interest in developing rice storage and drying facilities across three provinces using government-backed low-interest loans, a bank official said yesterday. ...

Solar home systems are an appropriate solution to provide affordable, reliable and clean electricity in rural Cambodia, and the Green Microfinance Programme assists villagers to take out loans to purchase them. ...

Next year’s national election is unlikely to slow the rapid pace of bank lending growth but could put a temporary crimp in deposits, though the sector is expected to have sufficient liquidity to absorb the impact, according to a report released yesterday. ...

The central bank announced on Friday that it has fined an unnamed microfinance institution (MFI) $100,000 for engaging in non-transparent lending practices. ...

In order to promote interbank transactions and lending, the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) has officially launched a new online platform which allows financial operators to apply for and trade the central bank’s financial instruments like negotiable certificates of deposits (NCDs), liquidity-providing collateralised operations (LPCOs) ...

The state-owned Rural Development Bank on Monday announced it will rebrand as the Agriculture Development Bank within the next couple of years, offering a wider range of funds and banking services. ...

Cambodia’s banking sector enjoyed another strong performance last year as the Kingdom’s economy continued to expand, with banking credit moderating, deposits increasing and financial institutions remaining healthy as they further integrate into the global economy, the central bank said in its annual report yesterday. ...

Inflows of foreign capital into the Kingdom’s banking sector nearly doubled during the first half of the year as two heavyweight players entered the local market and lending institutions responded to revised minimum capital requirements, a central bank official said yesterday. ...

Addressing the delegates, Chea Serey, director general of National Bank of Cambodia (NBC), stressed the role and importance of digital finance initiatives in broadening financial inclusion. She said digital finance could be a “game changer” for Cambodia’s nascent financial sector as it enables financial service ...

Cambodia’s first draft national strategy on promoting the riel is to be finalised next month and has been sent to the economic and financial policy committee of the Ministry of Economy and Finance for review and endorsement by end of the year. ...

Cambodia’s central bank purchased a total of $479.4 million worth of cash during the first half of this year to convert to riel, utilising one of the few tools the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) has to stabilise the value of the local currency and ...

An $8 million bond set to debut on Singapore’s stock exchange will mobilise private capital to support social enterprises and microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines, providing nearly half a million women in these countries with more access to credit in order ...

Speed Pay Plc, a newly licensed electronic payments service provider (PSP), is gearing up to join the ranks of mobile platforms tapping into Cambodia’s nascent digital payment sector. ...

The Cambodia Microfinance Association (CMA) has announced that it will establish a staff development fund to stem the tide of cross-institutional recruitment in the competitive microfinance institution (MFI) sector. ...

Just one day after the Kingdom’s microlenders mutinied and said they would not implement a government directive requiring all financial institutions to implement a 10 percent value-added tax (VAT) on fees for financial services, the Tax Department announced it would back down and temporarily suspend ...

The industry body representing the Kingdom’s myriad microfinance institutions (MFIs) threw down the gauntlet yesterday, announcing that its members had categorically rejected a government directive that orders them to charge a value-added tax (VAT) on financial services fees and would not apply it. ...

Global payments giant Visa is the first international financial firm to announce the roll out of a payment solution in Cambodia for quick response codes, or QR codes, those pixelated black and white squares designed to be read by a smartphone camera that have begun ...