The bank that likes to say less: Cambodia’s greatest commercial success story is not over yet
AN HOUR’S drive south of Phnom Penh, deep in rural Cambodia, Chrek Heang is doing the rounds of his rapidly expanding poultry and fisheries business. Just four years ago he was living, like most of his countrymen, in a small wooden hut with a tin roof, tending to 1,000 chickens. Now he can chat away in the cavernous living room of his new brick-built five-bedroom house, the proud owner of 11,000 chickens as well as 30,000 fish, and the employer of five people. In a dirt-poor country like Cambodia, barely a generation on from the terror of the Khmer Rouge and a devastating civil war, more like Mr Chrek Heang are badly needed… He would never have prospered without three vital loans from a bank: an initial one of $10,000, followed by another of $25,000 and the last of $70,000. The lender was the Association of Cambodian Local Economic Development Agencies (ACLEDA), to give the bank its full and very unsexy title. It was originally set up in 1992 by the United Nations and the International Labour Organisation as a microfinance non-governmental organisation. The aim then was to support refugees and demobbed fighters at a time when the war-ravaged country was in tatters. Its goals now stretch beyond Cambodia’s borders …
