Saturday, July 3, 2010

Kingdom’s poorest bore brunt of financial crisis

Friday, 02 July 2010
By Jeremy Mullins
The Phnom Penh Post

THE global financial crisis has disproportionately affected Cambodia’s rural and urban poor, according to a Cambodian Economic Association (CEA) survey released yesterday.
Job loss and declining income were widely experienced during the crisis, according to residents of 15 villages sampled last year, but the report’s joint author said that many were unaware of the source of their financial challenges.
“Some people didn’t know anything about an international crisis; they just knew their income dropped,” CEA President Chan Sophal said.
According to the report, “Impact of the Economic Downturn on Households and Communities in Cambodia”, decreasing incomes and job loss particularly affected the urban poor during the crisis: 61 percent reported those factors as their main challenge in 2009 – a dramatic rise from 0.9 percent the year previously.

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