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China a main focus at IDB meeting

Honduran President Ricardo Maduro, left, listens to Inter-American Development Bank President Enrique Iglesias during the inaugural session of the Inter-American Development Bank's annual meeting in Ginowan City, Okinawa prefecture, yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Latin America's main source of multilateral financing, yesterday began its annual meeting in Japan with new powerhouse China taking center-stage.

The meeting in Okinawa has brought together Latin American leaders including Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and his Bolivian counterpart Carlos Mesa and comes less than a month after South Korea became the IDB's 47th member and only the second Asian nation.

"I sincerely hope this ... will provide us with an opportunity to promote economic links between the two regions -- Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia," Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said in opening remarks.

"I strongly believe that Japan's role as a reliable and stable economic partner for the region as well as a liaison between the region and Asia is now more and more important," said Tanigaki, who chairs the conference.

But a major focus will be China, which is sending a delegation, as its surging economy has fueled a hunger for Latin American raw materials that has stimulated trade but also proved a formidable rival in manufacturing.

The three-day conference will appropriately be in Japan, which in 1976 became the first Asian country in the IDB and provides 5 percent of the bank's capital.

Japanese officials warned that its IDB peers in Latin America should deal with China "cautiously" or they could be "swallowed" by its fast-growing manufacturing power.

Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Hiroshi Watanabe told reporters late on Saturday that some of his colleagues at the IDB agreed with him in a preparatory meeting.

"I told them that they have to have clearer plans to split roles in the process from supplying raw materials to assembling parts, the whole of which could be dominated by China," he said.

"In a big market where countries with great growth potential and those with lower potential co-exist, Latin American countries have to proceed cautiously, or they could be swallowed or beaten," he said. "They cannot be as complacent as thinking trading with China will be good enough."

IDB president Enrique Iglesias has called the Okinawa meeting "a new window" for the bank, whose previous meetings have all been in the western hemisphere or Europe except in the central Japan city of Nagoya in 1991.
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