Business & Economy

Brazil’s Odebrecht construction company formally challenged a Florida law that prohibits governments from contracting with companies that have business ties with the Cuban government.

New changes that will favor the private sector on the island will be made to the Labor Code of Cuba, which is currently under review. To date, conflicts and complaints by workers in the private sector “have not been significant.”

The Cuban government will reinstitute the collection of taxes on food imported by all travelers entering the country, according to a statement from the Customs office.

The Cuba’s emerging private sector will be represented at “CietCuba-2012” Second International Convention of Tourism Studies, scheduled to take place from June 18 to 22 at the Havana Convention Center.

The discouraging news has not been reported in any official Cuban media which usually focuses on good economic news while avoiding the bad, leaving such reporting to the foreign press.

A delegation of the Cuban government led by Noel Vazquez Perez, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment. This is an unprecedented event ever since the Asian country severed ties with the island after the island’s revolutionary victory in 1959.

The 32nd international tourism fair — “FITCuba 2012” — opened on Tuesday on the Santa Maria Key beach resort located in the center-north of the island.

The PetroVietnam state oil company is considering drilling in its concessions off the coast of Cuba next year, an executive of the company told Reuters on Friday.

Mexican senators Francisco Arroyo Vieyra, Yeidckol Polevnsky and Carlos Sotelo, who attended a parliamentary meeting in Havana, believe that Mexico could forgive the debt owed to it by Cuba, reported the Mexican daily La Jornada.

Large investments are being implemented in Cuba’s Varadero beach resort to expand the room capacity of hotels and to receive foreign visitors. The program seeks to strengthen the preference for the island’s principal beach and its international positioning.