The sector of professional services linked to information technology, research, tourism and healthcare embraces over 50 percent of Cuba’s income money out of exports. Cuba’s Foreign Trade Minister Raul de la Nuez explained the professional level of the island nation’s workforce “is creating ideal conditions to foster and advance the export of professional services linked to intellectual activities.”

Dominican Republic´s external financing gap for 2004 may be US$50 million more than anticipated, a figure that corroborates earlier IMF remarks that suggested that its ongoing review of the country´s recent economic trends and performance pointed to a widening of the country´s estimated US$293-million financing gap. Having received debt relief equivalent to US$193 million from the Paris Club (US$155 million in maturities coming due this year, plus US$38 million in arrears), a US$50-million increase in the country´s residual gap would bring the new total to US$150 million, the DR1.Com news service reports.

The high cost of operating Dominican airline companies, due to excessive taxes and the fact that many costs must now be paid in US dollars, could soon mark the demise of the fledgling Dominican aviation industry, according to a report in El Caribe daily. Isabel Patin, of Servicios Aereos Profesionales, says that company yields are at a minimum because airfares are sold in pesos, while aviation companies must pay their operating expenditures in hard currency, DR1.Com reports.

With roughly 3,500 rooms scattered in eleven lodgings, Sol Meliá Co. continues to have a leading presence in Mexico´s vast travel market. Penciled in as the best foreign hotel chain in congress and convention tourism, Sol Meliá has also jotted down the names of two of its facilities –the Gran Meliá Mexico Reforma and the Gran Meliá Cancun- on the list of the leading hotels of the world.

In a keynote address to CIMEX, the Caribbean Media Exchange, Geoffrey Lipman, Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization, said that Tourism should be the leading issue for Caribbean States in trade and development strategies. He said that "The world economy needs a successful Doha Development Round and tourism should be an important part of the final package with balanced & structured liberalization to help develop the export economies of the world´s poorest countries.

”Tourism could be a key factor in the battle for stepped-up development, education, job creation and dignity among the world´s poorest countries,” said Geoffrey Lipman, special advisor to the UN secretary-general, at the recently concluded general assembly of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Gains in hard-currency revenues, the advance of corporate initiatives, infrastructure improvements and the creation of millions of jobs in the travel sector could chip in considerably to the so-called Millennium Development Goals.