Orlando Smith, chief minister of the British Virgin Islands, discussed ways to strengthen ties between the British and United States Virgin Islands while he attended the third meeting of the Inter Virgin Islands Council (IVIC) in St Thomas last week. The Chief Minister headed a BVI delegation including permanent secretaries in the Chief Minister’s Office and Communications and Works, the Director of the BVI International Affairs Secretariat and other senior technical staff.

Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada’s third-largest lender by assets, plans to buy as much as 80 percent of Jamaica’s Dehring Bunting & Golding Ltd investment firm for as much as $80 million. Chief Executive Officer Richard Waugh explained his company is expanding in international markets where Scotiabank already has a presence.

For tourists visiting Panama, the sight of dozens of ships queuing in the Pacific haze to enter the Panama Canal is a spectacular scene and a reminder of the canal’s importance to international shipping and world trade. “We’re reaching full capacity,” says Francisco Míguez, finance director of the state-run Panama Canal Authority (ACP). “We thought we would hit it by 2012 but it is now more likely we’ll reach it in 2009-2010.”

Brazilian economists cut their 12-month inflation forecast for a sixth week as a stronger currency drove down the cost of imported goods and the economy slowed. Consumer prices probably will rise 4.05 percent over the next 12 months, according to the median estimate of about 100 economists at financial institutions in a weekly central bank survey taken this month. The median estimate fell from 4.08 percent a week ago.

Mexico’s peso rose to its highest in two months on expectations that growth in the U.S., Mexico’s biggest trading partner, will sustain demand for goods from Latin America’s second-biggest economy. A report last week showing manufacturing in New York state unexpectedly accelerated bolstered confidence the U.S. economy is withstanding a slump in the housing market. In the first six months of 2006, 96 percent of Mexico’s non-oil exports were from the manufacturing sector.

Construction of the road that links Santo Domingo with Samana, the Portilllo, Catey and Arroyo Barril airports and a plan to overhaul the territory have raised interest among local and foreign investors that look into investing in tourism projects in Samana and other regions of northern Dominican Republic. It is expected that this investment boom will triplicate the hotel offer there at two thousand rooms in Samana.