“Sustainability is a vital vision of ACLEDA bank. It was founded with such sustainability for 17 years ago to provide exclusive financial services for all- both private and public. This continues to be our guiding principle today throughout the 248 branches and offices in the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Lao PDR,” In Channy, president and CEO of ACLEDA bank, said during the grand occasion.

ACLEDA bank has 76 standard offices to provide the most comfortable and efficient facilities for its customers to conduct their financial transactions.

Recently, the bank has launched a top-up service suing mobile-mobile technology and service which allows customers to pay bill via mobile phone.

According to CMA’s data, non-performing loans (NPLs) declined 1.9 percent over the period to 1.48 percent, or US$8.7 million.

“We have seen the economic situation begin to recover, and people have begun to expand their businesses, so they need capital again,” Hout Ieng Tong, CMA President, was quoted by the Post as saying.

“The slash of interest rates of between 0.2 and 0.5 percentage points by MFIs in early September was also a factor,” said he. He added that interest rates are currently between 1.5 and 2.8 percent per month at MFIs.

During this period, the total loans increased but the number of borrowers was down 14.7 percent to 883,087 down from more than 1 million three months earlier, according to the report.

The report show that CLEDA bank’s outstanding portfolio of small loans was up 5.49 percent to US$172.2 million, while the drop of its NPL ration was from 1.63 percent in 2nd quarter to zero at the end of the September of 2009.

Mobile service provider Smart Mobile (093/010) entered within the Cambodian telecoms market with a world-class team of telecommunications experts offering experience from across Cambodia and across the globe.

From today on, Smart Mobile’s subscribers will be able to recharge their cell phone balance through ACLEDA’s ATMs throughout the country 24 hours a day and 7 days a week without any service charge. The Phone operator setting up this new service is to make it easier for phone’s users to recharge the mobile phone balance.

According to the statement, in the near future top-up through ATM will be available at other banks as well.

Kiril Mankovsky, Smart Mobile’s Chief Marketing Officer, was quoted by the Post as saying that “Smart Mobile was in the final stage of negotiations with other banks in the Kingdom, but that it was not ready to make any formal announcements until the deals are signed.”

The easy instruction for recharging phone balance is following:

• Insert bank’s ATM card into ATM machine
• Select language, Insert 6-digit PIN
• Select transaction type mobile phone recharge
• Select Smart Mobile
• Select account type
• Select recharge amount
• Take your receipt on which a serial number for recharging your Smart Mobile phone balance printed out
• Enter the serial number into your mobile phone correctly, and the amount you selected will be added to your phone balance immediately.

On the other hand, all Smart Mobile’s users can top up their accounts with scratch cards sold everywhere, and also use WING’s card, which the phone provider has already signed a deal with ANZ bank’s WING to offer electronic top-up. The system would be based on a pin-code access service to add to the scratch card credit system offered by Smart Mobile.

National Bank of Cambodia Director General Tal Nay Im gave speech at the Cambodian Club of Journalism that non-performing loans at the commercial banks reached 5.2 percent by the end of May, 2009, up 1.8 percentage points from the beginning of the year. She warned the rate could reach as high as 10 percent by the end of the year.

Bad loan was on rise when bank’s borrowers struggled with repayments amid declining cash flow following the World economic recession.

Tal Nay Im said that the Central Bank was not overly worried by the defaults.

According to the National Bank of Cambodia’s 2008 annual banking supervision report, the bad loans in 24 commercial banks was up to 3.7 percent of total outstanding loans, about US$2.4 billion, at the end of the last year, up from 3.4 percent the year before.

15 of 24 commercial banks had no non-performing loans as of the end of 2008, a situation described by some people in the sector as unlikely. And another four had NPLs ratios under 4 percent, according to the report.

The total value of loans soared 54.7 percent from US$1.51 billion to $2.35 billion. The absolute value of NPLs decreased to US$87.44 million at the end of 2008 from $52.95 million a year earlier.

The VOA reported, the Foreign Trade Bank’s bad loan rate went from 30.7 percent to 32 percent in 2008. Canadia bank rose from 6.8 percent to 11.1 percent in that period. By the way, ANZ Royal bank saw an increase from 0.4 percent to 2.6 percent in that period.

In the mean time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank also warned of rising rates of non-performing loans in the major banks in Cambodia.

“Last year, some banks had zero NPL ratios because they did not have bad loans when we audited them, but since the start of this year all the banks have NPLs,” the Phnom Penh Post quoted Tal Nay Im as saying.

Gui Anvanith, FTB’s managing director, was quoted by the VOA as saying that “Our bank works with big companies, and we have collateral, which has the highest rate of non-performing loans in the country.” He added that “We will continue to be cautions and to strengthen the banking system.”

The Phnom Penh Post quoted In Channy, ACLEDA president as saying that the bank’s NPLs were actually 0.44 percent of outstanding loans at the end of the last year and had increased to 1 percent, largely as a result of loans to large-scale business in the construction-materials sector.

According to the circular on non-performing loans, provisions and interest accounting, commercial banks must apply the following regulation for non-performing loans and interest accounting. The Central Bank issued Prakas B7.02-145 from June 7, 2002 on classification and provisioning for bad and doubtful debt specifies the minimum mandatory level of specific provisioning depending on the classification concerned.

The non-performing loans must be classified in three categories according to the late payment, including substandard (10%), doubtful (30%) and loss (100%).