Cambodia: Agricultural Cooperatives and their Contribution to Agricultural Finance

The cooperative sector in Cambodia today comprises over 1,200 individual cooperatives, which have had formal status since 2013 through the Law on Agricultural Cooperatives. Based on this, they can conduct commercial business, accept savings money in addition to their cooperative deposits, and grant loans to their members. Since 2003, the German Cooperative and Raiffeisen Confederation (Deutscher Genossenschaftsund Raiffeisen-Verband, DGRV) has been supporting hundreds of individual cooperatives through the two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Buddhism for Development (BfD) and the Cooperative Association of Cambodia (CAC), as well as the national cooperative federation of Cambodia and the department of the Ministry of Agriculture, responsible for cooperatives. It does so by providing advice and a small loan fund. As part of a study conducted by the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF) at the University of Duisburg- Essen in February and March 2022, 15 cooperatives in the Cambodian provinces of Battambang, Siem Reap, Kampong Chhnag, Kampong Speu and Kampot were visited and members, as well as representatives of the board of directors were interviewed in group discussions about the structure of the respective cooperative, its current services for members with a focus on “agricultural financing”, as well as the impacts achieved as a result. The findings of the study are intended to contribute to a better picture of the overall situation of agricultural financing in the context of development cooperation (DC).