A recent UN report shows direct foreign investment in Latin America and the Caribbean took a 20 percent nosedive last year, down to $36.5 billion.

The report, issued by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, disloses this was the only world region where foreign cash flow fell in 2003, chiefly driven by acute downturns in both Brazil and Mexico.

The study reveals that MERCOSUR, South America’s trade bloc formed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, has endured the most spectacular decline in recent years.

Taxes levied on air companies for the use of the Juan Santamaria Airport in Costa Rica’s San Jose are 35 percent higher than in any other Central American nation, a situation that tolerates no further duty increments as the one demanded by Alterra Partners, the private consortium that runs the terminal.

British Airways (BA), Europe´s second-largest airline, is trumpeting a major discount offer for long-haul flights. BA is making this move in an effort to bring more business-class passengers to take first-class seats, a demand that usually dwindles during summertime vacations.

Beginning on June 24, the offer will be legally binding for flights scheduled between August 15 and 31 to some 28 destinations around the world, including Nairobi, Cape City (South Africa) and New York.

TUI, Europe’s number-one tour operator, has teed off the ongoing year with heavy losses, the company’s President Michael Frenzel informed this week in Hanover.

Stacked up against the first three months of 2003, the group’s first-quarter losses tallied €149 million ($175 million), up a gaping 50 percent, Mr. Frenzel continued.

One of the main reasons behind this downfall in the beginning of 2004 had to do with the fact that TUI netted no additional buyout gains as it did happen in 2003 before company sold some of its segments.

Argentine Airlines (AA) has just reopened its office in San Juan and one of its jetliners covering the Miami-Buenos Aires route will start flying to Puerto Rico as early as November, AA’s Marketing Manager for the Caribbean Eduardo Rozen said this week.

A 247-seat Airbus 340 will make a weekly stopover in San Juan en route from Miami to Buenos Aires.

Mr. Rozen indicated the air carrier has included this flight given the increasing interest of Puerto Ricans to travel to Buenos Aires since December 2002, most of them driven by the ongoing currency exchange rates.

An analysis pieced together by the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicates that Latin America and the Caribbean won’t be able to put growth numbers on the board unless they lay the grounds for sustainable development on the basis of equality.

Experts say that as long as women, schoolchildren and least-favored sectors –like indigenous people- continue to have nutritional, educational and healthcare shortfalls, they’ll never become a competitive workforce in the economic field.