Regional Banks and Regionalism: A New Frontier for Development Financing

The 1990s witnessed the parallel forces of globalization and regionalization strongly at work. While seemingly contradictory, they are in fact complementary aspects of market development. This paper will focus on the latter, and its special aspects of regionalism; i.e., policy driven regional cooperation. Particular attention will be given to the recent advances and challenges in two crucial aspects of regionalism: regional trade and financial cooperation. The other important area of concern of the paper is how regional development banks are supporting regional initiatives and identifying emerging issues which they should be preparing to deal with.