Credit to Construction & Real Estate Sector Rises to US$14bn as of H1 2022: NBC

• 1 August 2022
• Local News
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As of June 2022, total loans provided to the private sector reached over US$51.5 billion, a growth of 23.4% year on year. Among all sectors, loans provided to construction and real estate represented 32%, or approximately US$14 billion.

According to the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC)’s report published on 25 July, for banking institutions, personal home loans accounted for 13.7% of the total, while the construction and real estate sectors took 9.3% each.

Loans provided to these two sectors keep increasing despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the report added.

The construction sector has seen positive growth thanks to increases in foreign investment and a rise in local income, which have caused demand to rise. However, approved construction projects in terms of investment value, area, and the number of projects still dropped by 33.5%, 32.6%, and 21.8%, respectively.

For the real estate sector, housing prices in Phnom Penh remained stable in the six-month period of 2022 but are predicted to increase 3.5% y-o-y, while pricing in other provinces has also seen a 1.7% rise.

Meanwhile, house purchasing transactions are projected to grow 12.5% this year, while transactions for condos will still experience a drop of 44%.

The same report also stated that Cambodia’s banking system still enjoyed robust growth in both loans and deposits in the first half of 2022 with active assets of over US$75.2 billion. Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) at the banks and the microfinance institutions were at controllable rates of 2.6% and 2.3%, respectively.

To date, Cambodia currently has 58 commercial banks, 9 specialized banks, and 86 microfinance institutions, with a total of 2,614 headquarters and branches as well as 3,998 ATMs throughout the country.

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