During the past 15 years, Cambodia’s banking sector has played an important role in maintaining strong national economic growth.

Sathapana Bank PLC has developed from a local MFI to a commercial bank and it has been more active than ever in Cambodia’s economy.

Since the end of 2014, Sathapana Bank PLC has increased its loan capacity to all Cambodians to $600 million, up from $229 million.

As a result of Maruhan Japan Bank becoming Sathapana’s majority shareholder in 2012, new banking services have been added, including loan service, money deposit, local and international money transfer, and ATMs services.

In addition to that, Sathapana Bank PLC has established many financial services, such as electronic banking and commercial financing.

In 2017, Sathapana will set up mobile banking, SMS banking and credit and debit for Visa and Mastercard, according to Vong Sokhal, project operating director of Sathapana Bank PLC.

In the third quarter of 2016, Sathapana established 162 offices in 25 provinces and cities around the country, in addition to offering a wide range of services to farmers, SMEs, and large corporations.

Currently, the commercial bank has 140,000 debtors and 180,000 account holders.

Recently, because of the rice price decline, farmers are facing loss of capital, most of which are financial loans. This begs the question as to whether or not MFIs or banks, who are the loan providers, should consider forfeiting or delay paying off debt, while some say their possessions should not be confiscated.

In response to this question, Dr. Bun Mony, CEO of Sathapana, said the bank was monitoring the situation closely, and he said there would be a fair solution depending on the actual case.

“For all MFIs and banks, from our perspective, real success only happens when our customers succeed,” Mony said and continued, “We cannot achieve success over our customers’ loss.”

“[Sathapana’s] goal is to help change Cambodian people’s lives for the better through financial services that we provide for them,” he concluded.