Within a favorable regional economic context, the IDB Office in Japan kept its focus sharp on monitoring the performance and prospects of the LAC, Japanese and other East Asian economies, as well as on key social development issues, organizing a series of seminars, conferences, study groups and roundtables with public and private sector representatives, academia, Bank officers and representatives of other international organizations. The Office also continued promoting inter-regional comparative knowledge sharing with East Asia, in close cooperation with ADB and ADBI, often employing the institutional framework developed through the Latin America/Caribbean and Asia/Pacific Economic and Business Association (LAEBA).

The 2005 economic focus started with a late-January presentation in Japan of the Bank's 2005 Report on Economic and Social Progress in Latin America (IPES): Unlocking Credit: The Quest for Deep and Stable Bank Lending, prepared by Arturo Galindo, Senior Economist of the Bank's Research Department (RES). This report addressed several critical macro and micro issues affecting the LAC financial sector, particularly with regard to the availability of credit for private sector financing in the region. The IPES presentation also included an overview of the performance of the LAC economies in 2004 and their outlook for 2005. The report was also presented at ADB Headquarters in Manila, Philippines.

The seven official seminars at the IDB-IIC Annual Meeting in Okinawa addressed several critical economic, financial and social issues of relevance to both Asia and LAC to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Taking advantage of Bank Chief Economist Guillermo Calvo's attendance at the Okinawa Annual Meeting, the Office also cohosted a roundtable with the University of Tokyo featuring Mr. Calvo and a number of the university's professors and graduate students. The roundtable focused on several key issues affecting the performance of financial markets in both East Asia and LAC.

Several events were organized under LAEBA's institutional umbrella in 2005. The first, at ADB's Headquarters in Manila, Philippines, focused on Remittances and Poverty Reduction: Learning from Regional Experiences and Perspectives. The conference was jointly organized with ADB and UNDP, two institutions with which the Bank maintains close cooperation agreements. The topic's relevance attracted distinguished speakers and an audience of development specialists, policymakers and related agencies from the two regions.

LAEBA's annual meeting was held this year at INTAL headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in late November 2005. Its theme was Competing in the Twenty-first Century: Revisiting the Role of Government in Latin America and Asia. Attendees from the two regions and from both ADBI and IDB discussed issues related to policy frameworks, the provision of regional public goods and other selective policies for enhancing global competition.
A third LAEBA event was a Tokyo workshop in the third week of December. It addressed The Role of the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) for Strengthening Partnerships Between Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia. Because of the recent slowdown in the multilateral (WTO) and regional (FTAA and APEC) trade negotiations, it attracted a large audience and several distinguished speakers from Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Panama and other East Asian countries.