Hang Touch

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Hang Touch by CREDIT, a partner of World Relief in Cambodia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 18 months, CREDIT, a partner of World Relief will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Hang Touch, 55, lives with her two daughters near Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Hang is a recycler, and requested this loan so she could purchase more materials to resell. I recently visited Hang to learn more about her situation.

Hang lives in a small village in Russei Keo, which is about 20km upstream from Phnom Penh on the Tonle Sap river. Hang used the money from her loan to buy metals to recycle. However, she apparently held on to a large amount of iron for a few months while the buying price steadily declined from $0.50/kg to $0.18/kg. As a result, she suffered a large loss, and has been unable to continue her business. She has been forced to sell her house and most of her belongings, and now lives with her sister.

Hang has a debt of about $2-3000 with several financial institutions, and about $200 with a moneylender. Borrowing from multiple MFIs is generally frowned upon (by MFIs) because of the risk that borrowers will take out a loan simply to repay a loan from another institution instead of putting the money towards income generating activities (which would allow the borrower to make repayments without problems). It was unclear how Hang planned to clear her (relatively large) debt. This was the second such loan problem I've encountered during my fellowship, and I was surprised that MFIs don't work harder to share information to avoid these situations, as each should want to avoid lending to someone who already has trouble making repayments. A staff member from CREDIT explained that Cambodia's laws concerning privacy and the lack of funding to create a centralized credit bureau are the two largest hurdles to solving this problem.

To get more revealing perspectives on poverty, I have begun asking clients what bothers them the most about their lives and what makes them the most happy. Hang said that she is happiest when her business is going well, and when her children have employment. The most difficult part about being poor is that if her business fails, it ends her dreams. She also mentioned that not being able to pay school fees for her children or grandchildren is a large concern.

(For those viewing this update in email, this lender's profile can be viewed here: http://partners.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=60503, and all loans from CREDIT MFI in Cambodia can be viewed here: http://partners.kiva.org/about/aboutPartner?id=9)"