Canadia Bank, the Kingdom’s second largest bank by assets, has reserved a $150 million financing package designed to grant loans to small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), the bank’s executive Charles Vann confirmed Wednesday.

Vann said that the new financing package will charge interest rates as low as 7.88 per cent per year.

“It is not much different from our existing loan types, but just the fact that at previous times we never allocated a large financing package for a specific sector,” Vann said.

“We see the strong growth of Cambodian SMEs and they need loans for expansion, so we decided to reserve a larger package for SMEs loan.”

Canadia Bank earned a net profit of about $80.78 million in 2017, according to the National Bank of Cambodia’s annual supervisory report.

Prime Minister Hun Sen promised last December to start a new bank with an initial capital round of $100 million to provide financing for SMEs.

Since the announcement, no progress toward such a bank has been reported.