Roaming the streets as a motorcycle taxi driver in Dangkao district on the edge of Phnom Penh, Ek Sovannara is lucky to earn US$2.50 a day. But his aspirations once stretched much further.
In 2005 he was presented with an opportunity to borrow US$500 from Credit Microfinance Institution, a firm established by the Christian charity World Relief US in 1993, to set up a small food stall in Trapaing Krasaing commune where crowds of garment workers pass on their way to work. His decision that day to take the money would stay with him for years.
Since then, borrowing more and more from private lenders to pay back microlenders, he has fallen into a complicated web of debt now so severe that he is considering selling his house and about 50 square meters of land, together worth around US$6,000.  Though he has managed to pay back some of what he borrowed, his business ceased turning a profit two months ago. After successive borrowing to repay other loans, Sovannara still owes US$1,520 to Credit Microfinance Institution and a further US$400 to seven private moneylenders.
Sovannara, 39, is far from alone in his battle with debt. From its nascent days in the mid-1990s, Cambodia now has more than a million families with a microcredit loan in a population of 14 million people. That number is growing fast. Total outstanding loans as of the end of the first quarter amounted to US$711.8 million, an almost 10 percent increase over the previous quarter.
Like many others in his village, he has been approached by both private moneylenders and licensed microfinance institutions that hand out small loans with few strings attached, offering anywhere between US$50 and US$2,000.
Private lenders often allow borrowers to pay back the formal lenders, who in return agree to provide their clients with more credit. A lack of available credit history has also produced cases where clients have taken loans from more than one microfinance institution at the same time