Ecuador has obtained a total of 7.53 billion dollars in credit lines and loans from China, its Finance Ministry.

 The Andean country's president, Rafael Correa, sought the funding during an official visit this week to cope with the plunge in prices of crude oil, its top export.

China's development bank will lend Ecuador 1.5 billion dollars for investment while the Bank of China will lend it 480 million dollars, the ministry said.

Those totals followed a 5.3 billion dollars credit line announced from China's state-run Exim bank.

Correa said the agreement was mutually beneficial for both countries.

 ECUADOREAN PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA:

"China has the finance capabilities. This is the bottleneck for countries transitioning to development; finance. But in China the bottleneck is its energy sources, and we have the energy, the fossil fuels, the minerals, that China needs. So really, it is complementary even in regional strategies. And this is one of the agreements that we've signed during this state visit; the China-Ecuador Strategic Agreement. And with this visit we have strengthened this complimentary relationship and all of this has happened in a brotherly manner between equals, and most of all, with respect of the sovereignty of both countries without, for example, imposing humiliating constraints which multilateral organizations used to impose on our countries, which have even brought a number of countries into disarray, especially in Latin America," he said.

Correa's government has trimmed the 2015 budget and thrown up trade tariffs with neighbors Colombia and Peru as it tries to cope with the plunge in oil revenue.

Analysts warn Ecuador's financial dependence on China, already the country's top financier before the loans were granted, is risky for the country of 15 million.

China is also financing the construction of new hydroelectric dams in Ecuador and has contracts in place for the purchase of crude oil.

Earlier on Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he had secured $20 billion in investments on his own visit to China this week, but it was not clear whether that included fresh loans or was part of an existing oil-for-loans deal.