Cuba is pledging to stick to the economic guaranties it has traditionally given to international financial institutions and foreign companies that do business with the island nation. Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Raul de la Nuez, speaking before a group of entrepreneurs that attended Havana’s 22nd International Fair, assured there won’t be any problems as far as availability of hard currency funds are concerned. Mr. de la Nuez was clearly referring to the Cuban government’s recent decision to call off the circulation of U.S. dollars in the national territory and replace greenbacks with convertible pesos.

British Airways (BA), one of Europe’s largest air carriers, will cease flying to Colombia on February 2005 in an effort to stop the bleeding of heavy losses the company’s operations in that South American nation have sustained over the past five years. This is the second European airline that has called flights to and from Colombia to a halt. Germany’s Lufthansa has not flown to that nation since 2002.

Foreign tourists traveling to Mexico from next month onward, will find a new bank note of 1,000 pesos (some $85 to the current exchange rate) that will go the 500-peso bill one better as the highest denomination in the hands of the Bank of Mexico (BM). The new bill will hit the streets on November 15. Manuel Galan, programming head at the BM, said the 1,000 note comes on the heels of inflationary pressures that have hit the country hard in recent months.

Three new tourist projects will be built in Cancun at a price tag of $3.5 billion. Mexican President Vicente Fox laid down the first brick of the Riviera Cancun, a megabuck project that includes a 36-hole golf course and as many as 3,778 hotel rooms. According to estimates provided by the National Tourism Development Fund, this huge investment will create 5,000 new full-time jobs in hotels, let alone 9,500 part-time posts for other workers.

The Caribbean travel industry is ready to cash in on the sweet aftertaste left by the meeting on Professional Roles and Opportunities for Investment in Tourism (PROFIT 2004) that recently came to a close in Jamaica’s Montego Bay. With this view in mind and bent on fostering foreign investment in the Caribbean leisure industry, the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) signed an agreement with the United Kingdom’s Federation of Tour Operators (FTO), with the French Agency for International Development of Enterprises (UBIFRANCE), and the Spanish Foreign Trade Institute (ICEX).

Mexican President Vicente Fox announced the creation of a $2.6 million fund aimed at rescuing Cancun‘s beaches from the claws of longstanding deterioration and neglectfulness. The money, that will be complemented with funds from the Department of Environmental Protection, local authorities and businesspeople, will be mostly used to move three million cubic meters of sand from Isla Mujeres to Punta Cancun and Punta Nizuc.