Japanese Banker Pledges More Credit to West ChinaA senior executive with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation(JBIC), a Japanese government loan provider, said here that the bank will expand its exposure in China's western region by launching more loan programs.Yoshitaka Kawamura, senior executive director with the bank said during his five-day inspection of projects funded by JBIC loans in this capital of southwest China's Guizhou Province, that the bank will start from this year to attach more importance to programs for environmental protection, poverty elimination and education in China's western region. JBIC is the main channel for introducing Japanese government loans to China. The bank started in 1980 to grant loans for China' s infrastructure construction, agriculture, medicine, education and environment projects. Since then, JBIC's loans for programs in China have soared up to US$18.8 billion. JBIC's projects in China's western region became an important component of its annual investment in China in 1996. In recent years, JBIC's projects in China's hinterland have accounted for 70 percent of its annual loans in China. Kawamura said that the Japanese government and JBIC would like to assist China's strategic development of the western area, which aims to shrink the economic gap between the west and the better developed eastern area. Guo Shuqing, vice-governor of Guizhou welcomed the Japanese bank's support saying that the province has secured 37 JBIC's loan programs with total contracted loans worth 46 billion yen (about US$418 million). |
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