China Joins IDB

China will join the IDB as a donor member, contributing $350m to finance development projects. It will provide $125m to the IDB’s fund for special operations, which provides soft loans to Bolivia, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua; and $75m each to the multilateral investment funds focused on microenterprise, the inter-American investment program, as well as to a collection of IDB grant funds aimed at strengthening the institutional capacity. Trade between the region and China has increased 13x since 1995, the IDB says, to $110bn from $8.4bn. It is now the region’s second biggest trading partner after the US, claims the multilateral. China will be the IDB’s third East Asian member after Japan and South Korea. The IDB expects to approve about $10bn in new programs this year and $12bn in 2009.