Experts from 1,293 companies and 49 countries attending Havana’s 21st International Fair are engaged in negotiations within the framework of the island nation’s biggest yearly tradeshow now taking place at the ExpoCuba Fairgrounds.

According to sources close to the organizing committee, Thailand is making its big break at the Cuban fair with an array of homemade products that could perfectly draw a bead on the island’s domestic market.

Hit hard by the crisis in commercial aviation that made a dent in its third-quarter gains, the world’s number one aircraft maker has not lost everything as its defense sector is still keeping its nose to the grindstone.

Boeing Co. has just announced a 31 percent slide in gross benefits for the third quarter of the year, a figure that accounts for a $256 million loss. The number of negotiated deals also skidded 3.5 percent for a $12.2 billion trounce.

For a second year in a row, the leisure industry has led the pack of Nicaragua’s premiere sources of hard-currency money. Until August this year, the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute has tabbed a 9.8 percent growth in the number of foreign arrivals compared to the same span of time in 2002.

Desiderio Campos, head of the institute’s Operations & Investment Assessment Division, admitted to the local press that his country’s infrastructure is really poor and scarce.

The Dominican Republic’s National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP) agreed to give authorities a “friendly contribution” in return for an all-out fiscal reform.

The proposal calls for the approval of a tax reform bill in the first half of December that will come to strike down part-time agreements in this sector. The new reform should be implemented as early as January 2004.

Argentine Airlines (AA), a company that managed to get off the financial hook and went on to become Argentina’s leading carrier, will now set out to the conquest of Latin American skies.

AA president Antonio Mata said in a news conference that “our whim is to put Argentine Airlines on top of the country’s air carriers and from now on we’ll work harder to make it the number-one Latin American company of its kind.”

Crooners Ricardo Arjona, Juanes and Beto Cuevas have aired their interest in investing money in the Dominican tourism through the Arabian Nights Resort project in Punta del Valle, near the Samana Bay.

During their stay in this country for the President Latin Music Festival, the singers said to be interested in pouring some money into the tourist project now underway in Punta del Valle at a price tag of $60 million.