The Trinidad & Tobago Pilots Association (TTPA) promised the island nation’s government to help restore BWIA, the local airline currently marred by grim financial woes. TTPA director Rory Lewes praised the efforts of president Patrick Manning’s administration to keep the carrier up in the air and extolled the loyalty of the company’s pilots.

Mr. Lewes called on the general public to throw its support behind BWIA in the coming summertime months to push the airline back in the black.

The number of foreign businesses in Cuba has increased twentyfold in the past decade as a result of the government´s gradual relaxation of foreign-investment restrictions, resulting in a positive impact on the national economy, Cuban experts say.

In 1990, when Cuban authorities authorized foreign investment to try to stem the country´s serious economic crisis, there were barely 20 businesses with any foreign capital.

The free circulation of the euro in the Cuban destination of Holguin since June 1 has started with flying colors among travelers, especially European vacationers enjoying the delights of this tourist circuit of the island nation.

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.

More than a thousand entrepreneurs from as many as fourteen Central American and Caribbean countries, plus Colombia, huddled in a two-day powwow in the northern Colombian city of Cartagenas de Indias for the so-called Business Macro Round, a commercial effort aimed at looking for ways to egg on trade operations.

The share portfolio of Germany-based tour operator TUI, the world’s leading firm in the sector, was up 11 percent Monday at the Frankfort Stock Exchange after the company revealed its reserves are making a comeback and the German giant will close 2003 in the black. TUI’s shares grew 11.2 percent and closed at 12.3 euros apiece.