When Sam’s hard-up relatives needed money to buy a plot of land and start their own business several years ago, they turned to Sathapana Bank in Siem Reap to borrow about $20,000.
Now the Siem Reap tuk-tuk driver and his wife are struggling to make monthly repayments of about $500.
“We do not have the capacity to pay, so we missed payments,” Sam, who asked to use a pseudonym, told Al Jazeera. “We could only pay a small amount of the interest.”