News


Employee Highlight: Sokpove Phang, Consultant

Sokpove has extensive experience managing different project scopes. Her current portfolio includes creating reward systems and incentives for project-based work, designing standard operating procedures for medium-sized enterprise, and developing business plan including financial projection. She really enjoys the project complexities as that allows her to grow professionally.   Sokpove rejoined EMC in 2019 after working two years for a private equity firm specializing in the energy industry. There, she learned a lot in her role, from researching potential investments until portfolio monitoring. However, she also missed the opportunity to support companies...

Learning Culture at EMC

Soty is currently the Finance Manager at EMC. His work involves cashflow management and financial reporting. Additionally, he works closely with the management team to improve the business operations and to develop strategic planning. He brings to the team his financial specialization and from the team, he is learning important soft skills such as leadership, communication, and problem-solving.   Soty completed his professional degree with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in 2020 and is currently pursuing another degree with the Chartered Global...

Recruiting for Senior Consultants, Consultant, and Assistant in Finance and Admin

  Overview of Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC) EMC is a consulting and investment advisory firm that brings international best practices to private and development sectors in Southeast Asia. We offer our clients and partners an unparalleled combination of international expertise and extensive local knowledge.   Job Descriptions Please find our detailed job descriptions in the links below: Senior Consultant, Financial Advisory - Private Sector Strategic Partnerships Senior Consultant, Digital Consulting - Private Sector Strategic Partnerships Consultant - International Business Assistant, Finance & Admin - Finance, Commercial and Administration   Applications  EMC is committed to diversity and inclusion within...

EMC Vigilant Against COVID-19

Dear Clients and Business Partners, Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC) continues to diligently monitor developments concerning the impact of COVID-19. At EMC, the health and safety of our colleagues, clients, partners, and the communities in which we operate are a high priority. We have an eighteen-year legacy of responsible business, and we are committed to doing everything we can to ensure the wellbeing and safety of all our stakeholders. At the onset of the outbreak of COVID-19, we took immediate measures...

EMC Vigilant Against COVID-19

Dear Clients and Business Partners, Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC) continues to diligently monitor developments concerning the impact of COVID-19. At EMC, the health and safety of our colleagues, clients, partners, and the communities in which we operate are a high priority. We have an eighteen-year legacy of responsible business, and we are committed to doing everything we can to ensure the wellbeing and safety of all our stakeholders. At the onset of the outbreak of COVID-19, we took immediate measures across the...

The COVID-19 pandemic could have pushed up to half of Lao migrant workers in Thailand out of work

We knew the COVID-19 in Lao PDR and Thailand, and the subsequent lockdown would be difficult for workers and their families.  However, we had hoped the impact of the pandemic would not be this severe. We at Emerging Markets Consulting have been working on ways to estimate the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on migrant workers in Lao PDR and Thailand on behalf of the International Organization for Migration. It is a complicated task, with few precedents in the research literature. The results,...

Senior Consultants Position – Digital Consulting & Financial Consulting

Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC) is currently seeking enthusiastic, ambitious, and value-driven candidates to join our team as a Senior Consultant in Digital Consulting and a Senior Consultant in Financial Consulting in the Corporate & SME Advisory team in EMC Cambodia. The positions are full-time position which offers significant growth opportunities. Senior Consultants in EMC typically lead and manage teams to deliver client-based and internal consulting projects simultaneously. The positions provide opportunities to apply existing analytical and management skills and experience and, at the same time, rapidly acquire and diversify...

Career in Consulting by Bunhourng

“Being a fresh graduate has never been easy; I have been there, done that, myself. So, I understand it’s quite frustrating to know your passion because “you don't know what you don’t know, and you don't know what’s good is good until you encounter one”. It is quite challenging to land on the right job in the first time.” What are some opportunities the fresh graduates can get and develop at EMC? There are a lot of value propositions EMC could provide to fresh graduates....

Administration & Finance Assistant Position

Emerging Markets Consulting is a strategic management and private sector development consulting firm with offices in Cambodia and Laos. EMC brings international best practices to the private and development sectors in Southeast Asia by offering our clients an unparalleled combination of international expertise and extensive local knowledge.  We are currently seeking a candidate to join our team with following position in the Cambodia office. This position is full-time and offers significant growth and travel opportunities.  Administrative/Finance Assistant, Roles and Responsibilities:    Administrative Responsibilities:   Perform admin support function for projects including printing, photocopying and filing  Assist with company’s...

Lyly’s Professional Journey

Lyly is a Senior Business Analyst in the SME & Corporate Advisory team. She started at EMC in June 2020 as a Junior Business Analyst and was promoted immediately following her internship period. She holds dual bachelor’s degrees in Business Administration from American University of Phnom Penh (AUPP) and University of Arizona. We sat down (virtually) with Lyly to discuss about her experience. So why EMC? I’m at EMC because I’m interested in consulting. I want a job that is interesting and...

Vannaro’s Reflection on Community Engagement

Vannaro joined EMC in May 2020 as a Business Analyst in the SME & Corporate Advisory team. He holds two degrees – Accounting & Finance from CamEd Business School and International Economies from Institute of Foreign Languages. He enjoys spending time at coffee shop. His favorite spot is the Gloria Jean’s in CamKo City. In his spare time, he loves volunteering with youth groups and playing football with friends. In March 2019, Vannaro was selected as a member in cohort 7...

Business Analyst Positions for International Business and SME & Corporate Teams

Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC) is currently seeking Cambodian candidates to join our team as a Business Analyst in the Cambodia office. This position is full-time and offers significant growth opportunities; a large proportion of EMC analysts receive scholarships for postgraduate studies at top universities overseas. EMC is a strategic management and development consulting firm that brings international best practices to the private and development sectors in Southeast Asia by offering our clients an unparalleled combination of international expertise and extensive local...

Stronger Together, EMC and Cambodia in the Time of Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage Cambodia with the new wave of outbreak causing significant increase in number of cases and deaths. As of April 20, 2021, Cambodia recorded more than 7,000 cases and over 50 deaths. For the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020, the capital city Phnom Penh is in lockdown in an effort to curb the spread. While this presents unprecedented challenges, here at Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC), we understand and respect the decision. It...

Southeast Asia’s Emerging Markets, Post-Pandemic

A conversation with the financial analyst David Totten. Hopes are rising that a COVID-19 vaccine will release Southeast Asian economies from the strangleholds imposed by the pandemic and enable some economic growth over the coming 12 months. David Totten, managing director of Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC), is optimistic for the longer term but tells Luke Hunt the short and medium term will be bumpy, amid disparities between rich and poorer countries over the rollout of the vaccines. Totten studied in Germany...

COVID: Using CATI for data collection in Cambodia

EMC recently commissioned a quantitative survey of 200 smallholder farmers in four provinces via CATI (computer assisted telephone interviewing). The survey was one element of a larger feasibility study EMC conducted for investors in the financial services sector. We had originally planned typical face to face interviews, but the impact of COVID travel restrictions, shortly after the project commenced made this impossible. Face-to-face interviews have been the familiar method for primary data collection in surveys, and CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) is...

Designing a Fund to support energy efficiency

Cost-saving investments are of interest to all businesses; reducing greenhouse gas emissions are of interest to everyone. This blog post is part of a series that summarises our 2016 Pre-feasibility Study, conducted with Arup, of a Fund to support energy efficiency investments by Cambodian SMEs. Our research and analysis of possible energy efficiency solutions and their returns, as well as analysis of banking in Cambodia, determined that investing in EE solutions is profitable and that local banks do not lack...

Borrowing capacity estimates

Financial and environmental returns to energy efficiency

The financial returns to cost-saving investments are of interest to all businesses, as well as finance providers and development partners. EMC provided our client with quantitative conclusions despite limited local data when we estimated the returns to energy efficiency solutions. This is a continuation of our previous blog post (see here), on how we estimated the returns. The previous post detailed our approach. Here we present the results of our analysis. This analysis was then used to design a Fund...

How we estimated the returns to energy efficiency

The financial returns to cost-saving investments are of interest to all businesses, as well as finance providers and development partners. EMC was able to provide our client with quantitative conclusions despite limited local data when we were asked to estimate the returns to energy efficiency solutions. This blog post is based on a 2016 EMC study, conducted with Arup, that specified and analysed the financial (and environmental) returns to Cambodian firms investing in improved energy efficiency. Our analysis was used...

Estimating the Market Size for New Products

Quantifying the market size, and other demand factors, for new products and services is important for both firms and development partners. This blog post focuses on EMC work to identify key market segments, total demand and buying behaviour for a new ‘advanced cookstove’, introduced by SNV. However, this new product costs approximately twenty times more than the traditional cookstoves commonly available in local markets. So, for a successful introduction it was critical to understand how many consumers could afford such a product,...

Vietnam’s entrepreneurial ecosystem – new perspectives

The Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF), in cooperation with the Embassy of the Netherlands in Vietnam, partnered with EMC Consulting, the Mekong Business Initiative, Vietnam Angel Investor Network, and Saigon Innovation Hub to gather local stakeholders in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, to discuss new perspectives on Vietnam's entrepreneurial ecosystem. On 15 and 17 May 2018, local stakeholders from Vietnam’s entrepreneurial ecosystem gathered at two workshops in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to share their appreciation of the...

Human trafficking in Lao PDR – who is vulnerable?

After more than 15 years of strong economic growth, the official poverty rate in the Lao PDR has declined significantly. Nevertheless, there remain many districts throughout the country with very high rates of poverty. In addition, many Lao people live just above the poverty line. These people are vulnerable to falling back below it in the event of agricultural or health shocks. This can make them vulnerable to human trafficking. Lao PDR labour market The Lao labour market is characterized by a...

Borrowing capacity estimates

Borrowing capacity of Cambodian businesses

Although access to finance is oft-cited as a constraint on small and medium business, many Cambodian companies do have at least moderate borrowing capacity. This blog post is part of our work to design a Fund that would assist Cambodian SMEs invest in improved energy efficiency. In order to help determine the potential size of the Fund, the borrowing capacity of businesses was assessed. This borrowing capacity assessment was undertaken using micro-data from the 2014 Cambodian Inter-Censal Economic Survey (CIES) produced...

The Financing Gap Faced by SMEs

This post on the financing gap is based on EMC Consulting’s 2018-19 work for the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) ‘Investment Fund Local SMEs’, an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The study was commissioned to better understand the ‘missing middle’ in the Mekong region – those businesses that have outgrown microfinancing but do not yet have access to conventional financial services. We used the ANDE framework for analysing countries' entrepreneurial ecosystems. In-depth country studies were undertaken in...

Gazelles in Myanmar and Cambodia

This post about business "gazelles" is based on EMC Consulting’s 2018-19 work for the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) ‘Investment Fund Local SMEs’, an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The study was commissioned to better understand the ‘missing middle’ in the Mekong region – those businesses that have outgrown microfinancing but do not yet have access to conventional financial services. We used the ANDE framework for analysing countries' entrepreneurial ecosystems. In-depth country studies were undertaken in Cambodia,...

SMEs in the Mekong Region are not all alike

This post is based on EMC Consulting’s 2018-19 work for the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) ‘Investment Fund Local SMEs’, an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The study was commissioned to better understand the ‘missing middle’ in the Mekong region – those SMEs that have outgrown microfinancing but do not yet have access to conventional financial services. We used the ANDE framework for analysing countries' entrepreneurial ecosystems. In-depth country studies were undertaken in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar...

WE Act Empowers Women Entrepreneurs

Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC) is supporting Pact Cambodia on the WE Act project that is seeking to help young women entrepreneurs achieve their full potential. Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), this five-year program is focusing on urban-based micro or small businesses and aspiring women entrepreneurs between the ages of 15 and 35. WE Act aims to address key challenges to their businesses through strengthening business skills, expanding their professional network, increasing access to relevant information, financing,...

Lao PDR SME: Opportunities

Lao PDR has grown relatively rapidly, but needs to focus on the non-resource sector to innovate, diversify its economy and generate more inclusive wealth. SME are a key component of that strategy. Boosting Lao PDR SME As Lao PDR is a small (6.7 M) land locked country, but conveniently located and part of ASEAN, a lot of growth will require developing stronger, value added exports. This journey begins with dramatically improving the enabling environment to start up and grow small and medium...

Climate Change & Hydro Dams

We recently did some work on the 'green growth potential' of the Cambodian economy and currently are working on a assessment of the economic potential in the Khone Falls transboundary region of Lao PDR and Cambodia. So it's a good time to reflect on the impacts of climate change in Cambodia. Climate change is predicted to most negatively impact the global south countries, which are the countries least able to adapt and respond. Broadly, an increase in temperature and annual precipitation...