5 Riels

Cambodia's mid-1980s note issues came out of a period of acute monetary reconstruction. The PRK government had only reintroduced currency in 1980, after the Khmer Rouge had abolished money entirely between 1975 and 1979 — one of the few regimes in modern history to do so. These lower denominations from the late 1980s were practical instruments for a rebuilt banking system still operating under Vietnamese-backed socialist administration.

The print run of just over 12 million is modest but unsurprising for a 5-riel note whose purchasing power was negligible by the late 1980s, as inflation steadily eroded the low end of the riel scale.