A new study showing that loans from China’s state-owned banks to Latin America rose by 71 percent last year is drawing alarm bells on both sides of the Pacific.
The study, released last week by the Inter-American Dialogue and the Global Economic Governance Initiative at Boston University, says that Chinese banks lent Latin American countries $22 billion last year, and a total of $119 billion over the past 10 years.
Chinese loan commitments to Latin America last year amounted to more than the combined loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, the study says.
Virtually all of Chinese banks’ lending went to raw material extraction-related projects in countries that have a hard time getting loans from world markets, such as Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil. Cash-starved Venezuela alone got 47 percent of China’s state-owned banks’ loans to Latin America last year, it says.
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Etiquetas: Andres Oppenheimer, China, Latin America
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