Cuban President Fidel Castro announced Thursday that his administration will raise the value of the convertible peso by 8 percent, compared to the U.S. dollar and other hard currencies, as early as April 9. The revaluation of the Cuban currency will be, for the time being, of 8 percent compared to the U.S. dollar, Mr. Castro noted as he read a resolution of the Central Bank of Cuba during a special televised appearance from Havana´s International Conference Center.

Mexican trade, restaurants and hotels generated a record-setting gross domestic product index as it grabbed 1.4 billion pesos in 2004 and slashed off over a fifth of the country´s total GDP. Mexico´s leisure sector swung for the fences in January and came out with a tape-measuring dinger as it raked in more than $1 billion worth of revenues, up a blistering 15.4 percent from January 2004, the country´s Tourism Department informed this week in a press release.

Over the last two years, Brazilian tourism has backpedaled a slumping trend and has now begun to amass a $568 million surplus, according to a report issued by industry experts. Following a whopping $22.5 billion shortfall between 1990 and 2002, the South American country´s leisure industry managed to turn the tables on that deficit and churn out a $217 million and $351 million surplus in 2003 and 2004, respectively, up a blistering 61 percent between the two years.

Europe´s biggest tourism company, TUI, said 2004/05 booked sales in its tourism division are growing faster than last year, rising 5.3 percent as travel demand grows in western and central Europe. Booked turnover for the current winter season rose 4 percent as customer numbers increased 3.2 percent, TUI said at the international tourism fair in Berlin on Saturday.

The Panamanian government is planning to pour $100 million into nine different tourist projects in the Caribbean province of Bocas del Toro, Panama’s Tourism Minister Ruben Blades announced this week. The projects, to be executed in a western province that abuts Costa Rica, are linked to the hotel sector, tourist residences, marinas and shopping mall areas, Mr. Blades explained.

The Inter-American Development Bank (BID) reported this week that money sent by migrant workers in the course of 2004 rose nearly 20 percent from 2003. Latin American and Caribbean workers living abroad sent a record $45.8 billion to their homelands in 2004, up from $38 billion the previous year, the Inter-American Development Bank´s Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) informed.