T Khmum province struggles with debt
China disrupts WhatsApp service
TBONG Khmum province, whose economy is heavily dependent on rubber and pepper farming, had the highest rate of delinquent consumer loans in the country last year, according to the latest credit bureau data, with the province’s non-performing loan (NPL) rate climbing to more than double the national average.
The small eastern province, whose outstanding consumer loan portfolio reached $408 million as of the end of 2016, had an NPL rate of 2.87 percent, according to the 2016 annual report of the Credit Bureau Cambodia (CBC) obtained by The Post yesterday. Data showed some 1,372 of the province’s total 96,407 borrowers had fallen more than 30 days behind on their bank and microfinance loan payments last year.
Tbong Khmum province’s 2.87 NPL rate was followed by that of Ratanakkiri province, which had a 2.32 NPL rate, and Pursat province, at 2.29. The average NPL rate across the Kingdom was 1.28 percent on an outstanding loan value of $12.5 billion, according to CBC data.
Hout Ieng Tong, president and CEO of Hattha Kaksekar Ltd (HKL), one of Cambodia’s largest deposit-taking microfinance institutions, said yesterday that NPL rates in the country, including Tbong Khmum province, were not overly concerning. However, he said the CBC data showed that lenders needed to be more cautious to keep rates from further deteriorating.
“I don’t think that this is a serious problem,” he said.
“But it is an alert for us to be more cautious and strengthen our loan quality.”
Ieng Tong said he did not wish to speculate on the reasons behind the high delinquency rates in Tbong Khmum province, though he added that for HKL’s lending operations, Preah Vihear province actually showed the highest NPL rate.
Ly Leng, deputy governor of Tbong Khmum province, attributed the high NPL rate to the challenges that local farming communities faced as the result of low prices on their agricultural products. He explained that despite higher yields from rubber and pepper farms, market prices were volatile and demand often lacking.
“Farmers still produced good yields from their crops but there was a problem regarding market demand,” he said. “The price for pepper and rubber both fluctuated last year, with the troughs deeper than in previous years.”
THE last of Facebook’s major products that still worked in China was disrupted by the government on Tuesday, as Beijing broadly tightened its controls over the internet.
The product, WhatsApp, a messaging app used across the globe, was partly blocked by Chinese filters, leaving many unable to send videos and photos and some also unable to send text-based messages.
The disruption of WhatsApp was the latest in a long line of big digital services running up against China’s “Great Firewall”, the country’s system of internet filters and controls. In recent weeks, the government has appeared to increase its grip, an online crackdown fed by a perfect storm of politically sensitive news, important events and a new cybersecurity law that went into effect last month.
Sites hosting popular foreign television shows have had videos taken down, and tools used to skirt the censors have faced more frequent disruptions. In an article, the mouthpiece of the country’s Communist Party scolded the Chinese internet company Tencent over a popular video game, calling it too addictive.
The news environment has intensified the government’s online scrutiny. In recent weeks, the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo died in detention. A Chinese billionaire in the United States accused senior leaders of graft, using his platform on Twitter. And Hong Kong commemorated the 20th anniversary of its handover to China.
To complicate matters, the 19th Party Congress – where top leadership positions are determined – is just months away. The government puts an increased emphasis on stability in the run-up to the event, which happens every five years, often leading to a tightening of internet controls.
WhatsApp, which had generally avoided major disruptions in China despite the full block of Facebook and Instagram, appears to have become a victim of those circumstances.
The blocks against WhatsApp originated with the gov- ernment, according to a person familiar with the situation who declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak on the record about the disruption. Security experts also verified that the partial disruption in WhatsApp started with China’s internet filters.
“According to the analysis that we ran today on WhatsApp’s infrastructure, it seems that the Great Firewall is imposing censorship that selectively targets WhatsApp functionalities,” said Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, a cryptography research startup.
The actions by the Chinese government are another setback for Facebook in a country that has been difficult for the world’s largest social network to crack. Its flagship site was blocked in 2009 after ethnic unrest in western China; Instagram followed in 2014 during protests that fall in Hong Kong.
Beginning in late 2014, Facebook began an aggressive campaign to woo the Chinese government and get its main social network back into the country. As part of the courtship, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, showed off his language chops at a con- ference and later dined with President Xi Jinping during a state visit to the United States.
But Facebook’s efforts have slowed over the past year, and it has little to show for itself. Instead of getting a new product into China, the internet giant now faces the reality that its last app standing is under threat of being pushed outside the walls of Chinese censorship.
A spokeswoman for WhatsApp declined to comment.
WhatsApp is hugely popular around much of the globe, but the platform is not widely used in China, where local messaging app WeChat dominates. Even so, WhatsApp provides encrypted messaging, making it a useful tool for many Chinese to communicate or do business outside the country or in Hong Kong.
In the case of WhatsApp, it is not clear whether the targeted censorship of videos and photos was intentional, or if it was just a prelude to a more complete block. Previous partial blocks have sometimes led to full bans, or they have eventually been removed by the government, and service restored.
Beijing’s track record with other US social networking services does not bode well for WhatsApp. Besides Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, Google and Gmail are all blocked in the country.
“It’s like when Gmail first got throttled, the blockage was very uneven,” said Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.