Over 700 companies from 28 countries to attend business marketplace in Cuba
More than 700 companies and commercial firms from 28 countries will take part in the 12th Expocaribe Fair scheduled through June 13 in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, the island nation’s second largest burg some 944 kilometers east of Havana.
In the same breath, the Fourth Grand Caribbean Entrepreneurial Forum will get underway with the attendance of Cuba’s minister of foreign trade Raul de la Nuez and the secretary-general of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), Norman Girvan from Jamaica.
The tradeshow will similarly serve as the backdrop for a meeting between the Trade Promotion Organizations and the ACS’s Trade Development and Foreign Relations Committee.
All these events will gather Caribbean businesspeople with a view to single out business opportunities aimed at beefing up export markets and fostering closer ties for staple providers, the fair’s planners explained.
The Chamber of Commerce delegate to Santiago de Cuba, Carmen Rodriguez, said there’ll be 311 national expositors and 73 foreign attendants.
In the course of this year’s edition, participants will carry out workshops dealing with trade, tourism, industry and transportation.
Organizers of the region’s second-biggest trade marketplace foresee the participation of all sectors from the Cuban economy, chiefly from the eastern zone, as well as scores of Caribbean countries interested in improving their economic ties in the area.
According to Cuba’s Chamber of Commerce, in the course of the past ten years this fair has seen an increasingly larger number of national expositors and raised awareness toward an entrepreneurial culture with bargaining and exporting power within corporate Cuba.
As we speak, Cuba has trade relations with over 170 countries with such highlights as Venezuela, Spain, China, Canada and Russia.
In a region-by-region breakdown, Europe and America take the cake with 43 and 39 percent respectively of the island nation’s total trade volume.
