ABSTRACT

The microcredit sector in Cambodia has enjoyed an astonishing rise to global prominence since the early 1990s. As even CEOs and senior managers working in Cambodia's microcredit sector have long openly admitted, there is simply no solid evidence that microcredit has played a positive role in Cambodia's recent impressive record of growth and poverty reduction. Efforts to firmly establish a causative link between the dramatically rising supply of microcredit in Cambodia and the important achievements the country has made in terms of poverty reduction and sustainable local economic development have largely come to naught. Cambodia's least productive informal microenterprises thus serve to unfairly displace, or 'crowd out', the far more efficient but perhaps slower-moving formal small and medium-sized enterprises, which we know from economic history are the key to the promotion of sustainable development and growth. The very latest study exploring the over-indebtedness issue in Cambodia is the 'Voice of the Client' project that published its findings in 2017.