By Liz Lee and Joe Cash
BEIJING (Reuters) -China will commit credit lines of just under $10 billion to Latin American countries to support development, but in yuan, its top leader said when addressing a summit of Latin American and Caribbean officials in Beijing on Tuesday.
President Xi Jinping delivered a speech to kick off a ministerial meeting of the China-CELAC Forum, a platform for cooperation between China and Latin American and Caribbean nations.
The credit line, denominated in yuan, appears a push to further internationalise the Chinese currency, as China doubles down on deepening strategic and economic ties with the Latin American region.
During the inaugural China-CELAC Forum in 2015, Beijing offered $20 billion in credit to be used to help Chinese enterprises invest in infrastructure projects across the continent.
“China is doing a lot more yuan-based deals like this, particularly credit swap agreements that make it easier for the borrowing country to transact in RMB rather than USD,” said Eric Orlander, co-founder of the China-Global South Project.
China will also implement a visa-free policy for five Latin American and Caribbean countries, Xi said without detailing which countries they were.
The visa-free policy will be expanded to cover more countries in due course.
Trade between China and Latin America exceeded $500 billion for the first time last year, Xi said. That was up from the $450 billion in 2023, and China’s trade with Latin America has surged multifold from $12 billion in 2000.
Xi told Latin American and Caribbean officials it was a great pleasure to have “old and new” friends gather, and reinforced that China supports Latin America and the Caribbean nations to expand their influence in the multilateral arena.
The China-CELAC forum has been a vehicle to deepen dialogue between China and the bloc over trade, investment and infrastructure cooperation under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
(Reporting by Liz Lee, Joe Cash, Qiaoyi Li and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Stephen Coates)
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