The Cambodian riel

Where the first riel came from

Until 1953 one bank of issue, the Institut d'Émission des États du Cambodge, du Laos et du Viet-nam, served all three states of French Indochina with the piastre. That year its Cambodian branch put out notes marked in both piastres and riels, the riel standing at par with the piastre. Laos and South Vietnam made the same move with the kip and the đồng.

The National Bank of Cambodia was founded on 23 December 1954, after independence, and began printing a national riel of its own. The bank's history presents that step as a question of sovereignty over monetary stability and of national identity. At first the riel was split into 100 centimes. The sen replaced the centime in 1959.

What the Khmer Rouge did to money

On 17 April 1975 the Khmer Rouge took power and closed the National Bank. They destroyed its building, dismantled the banking system and abolished the use of riel notes. Banknotes printed for the regime that year were never issued. Until 1980 Cambodia had no monetary system at all.

How the riel came back after the regime fell

The regime collapsed on 7 January 1979. On 10 October that year the central bank was re-established as the People's Bank of Kampuchea, with a handful of surviving staff rebuilding it from nothing. Trade still ran largely on barter.

The second riel went into circulation on 20 March 1980. Its opening value was four riels to the US dollar, three Vietnamese đồng, or one kilogram of rice. With no older money to exchange, the government handed the new notes out to get people using them. Coins barely followed: an aluminium 5 sen piece was struck in 1979, and nothing more until 1994 brought coins of 50, 100, 200 and 500 riels, which are seldom seen.

Why dollars change hands beside it

Dollars came into the country in the 1980s and early 1990s with United Nations humanitarian aid and with remittances from refugees abroad. From 1991 to 1993 the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia stationed 22,000 personnel in the country, and their spending made up a large part of the economy.

The riel remains the money of the provinces. In the cities and tourist areas ATMs pay out dollars, and hotel rooms and airline tickets must be priced in them. The central bank has tried to shift small payments back to the riel. In June 2020 it announced that US notes of $1, $2 and $5 would be phased out of wide circulation.

Does the name come from a fish

A popular story links the riel to a small Mekong river fish of the same name. The likelier source is the real, the unit that made up the Spanish-American silver dollar of eight reales, which is also where the rials of the Middle East got their name.