SANTIAGO, Aug. 4 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's latest Latin America tour was "very encouraging," the head of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said Monday.

ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena told Xinhua that the trip was "very encouraging" and the decisions reached during Xi's tour were "highly important."

During the trip, Xi paid state visits to Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba, and attended the sixth summit of the emerging-market bloc of BRICS, and a meeting with Latin American and Caribbean leaders.

During the BRICS summit, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa agreed to set up a development bank with 100 billion U.S. dollars of capital commitment and a 100 billion U.S. dollars' contingency reserve arrangement (CRA) to finance development projects in member countries and help them weather global financial crises.

"The BRICS summit is one of the most important events ... since the Bretton Woods Conference," said Barcena.

More important than the sizeable 200 billion dollars in capital "is the political decision behind the (cooperation). These countries are seriously rethinking the fact that the dollar cannot represent a country's only financial solution for development," said Barcena.

The development bank and the CRA are designed to serve as alternatives to Western-controlled financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.