He said that this region has been hit, maybe more than any other in the world, because it heavily depends on tourism, which was damaged due to restrictions on the movement of people and air and sea transportation. Precisely, these are the main sources of income for many of these countries.

The ACS is made up of nations with a coastline on the Caribbean Sea, every country of the Caribbean basin, and the member countries of the Central America Integration System, in addition to Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba, a total of 25 countries plus 10 associate observers.

Sabonge told Prensa Latina that the region’s challenges ahead are recovering our economies.

He noted that there is another relevant challenge: alleviating the effects of climate change, as our nations have been seriously hit by this phenomena due to changes of the patterns of rain, storms, more intense hurricanes, and this evidently damages the development of the entire region.

Climate change has worsened in the past 10 years, and the impact of the pandemic has exacerbated our vulnerabilities, he warned.

Another major challenge is to boost digital transformation to contribute to the development of tourism, trade and intraregional and international transportation towards this region.

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