Chi­na's Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping has of­fered con­ces­sion­ary loans to nine Caribbean coun­tries to­tal­ing some $3 bil­lion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day.De­tails of the of­fer were not im­me­di­ate­ly dis­closed, but Per­sad-Bisses­sar told re­porters the loans would be ear­marked for in­fra­struc­ture and de­vel­op­ment projects across the Caribbean."We re­al­ly wel­comed that gen­eros­i­ty," she said.

Chi­na's am­bas­sador to T&T, Hung Caio Ming, was al­so un­able to say what spe­cif­ic projects the loans are in­tend­ed to fi­nance but he said such loans from Bei­jing are "some­thing that will be in­creased in the fu­ture."Pres­i­dent Xi and his del­e­ga­tion de­part­ed yes­ter­day af­ter meet­ing with var­i­ous Caribbean lead­ers in Port-of-Spain. This coun­try was the first stop of a four-coun­try trip in the re­gion for Xi. He head­ed for Cos­ta Ri­ca, and al­so planned stops in Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States.

On Sat­ur­day, Xi said Chi­na al­ways views its re­la­tion­ship with the Caribbean "from a strate­gic per­spec­tive and we are com­mit­ted to the build­ing of a com­pre­hen­sive and co-op­er­a­tive part­ner­ship."His vis­it to T&T came a few days af­ter US Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden met with po­lit­i­cal lead­ers from across the Caribbean to sign a trade agree­ment and dis­cuss a range of se­cu­ri­ty, in­vest­ment and en­er­gy is­sues.

Dur­ing his stay, Xi al­so an­nounced that Chi­na was award­ing a $250 mil­lion loan to build a chil­dren's hos­pi­tal and signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing to ad­vance co-op­er­a­tion in en­er­gy, min­er­al and in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, among oth­er ar­eas.In re­cent years, Chi­na has stepped up its in­vest­ments across the re­gion. The Asian eco­nom­ic gi­ant has lent and in­vest­ed tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries for a guar­an­teed flow of com­modi­ties.

Latin Amer­i­ca now im­ports more from Chi­na than it does from the Eu­ro­pean Union, ac­cord­ing to the UN eco­nom­ic agency for the re­gion.