The International Finance Corporation has given Prasac Microfinance, the biggest player in the MFI sector, a loan of up to $ 10 million to expand its loan portfolio, specifically to small-medium enterprises.

According to a press release yesterday this is the fourth loan IFC has given the MFI and is expected to extend Prasac’s lending portfolio to $900 million, with 350,000 loans being given out by the end of 2019.

“Our [average] loan size is around $2,500. So at least, I think, the number of clients will be 3,000 to 4,000,” said Sim Senacheert, Prasac’s chief executive officer.

Senacheert said there were no specific conditions or restrictions applied by the IFC on issuing the new loans, but that it will proportionally match Prasac’s current clientele, 85 per cent of which are women.

As of the end of March, Prasac had a loan book of $658 million with more than 266,600 borrowers, and held more than $254 million in deposits.

Adel Meer, IFC’s financial institutions group manager for East Asia and the Pacific, said the IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, was looking to support commercially viable MFIs in the Kingdom and help scale up their operations.

“Our investment in Prasac helps elevate its business to the next level, enabling the company to lend to more households and enterprises so that businesses can grow and more jobs can be created in Cambodia,” Meer said in a statement.

By investing in Cambodian MFIs, the IFC aims to expand lending to around 845,000 people, or 48 per ent of the borrowers who use MFIs to service their credit needs.

The loan to Prasac follows an announcement earlier this month form the IFC, and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) that they were providing Acleda Bank with a $110 million loan to finance rural and micro-businesses, with a focus on agricultural enterprises.

The IFC is to contribute $40 million to the Acleda long-term loan, with $20 million from GAFSP, $30 million from Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and $20 million from the IFC’s Managed Co-Lending Portfolio Platform.