FIHAV 2024: Cuba’s top business event opens

Inauguration of FIHAV 2024. Photo: Enrique González (Enro)/ Cubadebate.

By: Daily Pérez Guillén

Havana confirms its potential as a business and event venue with the inauguration of the 40th edition of the FIHAV 2024 International Fair, at its usual host, the Expocuba exhibition grounds.

“The continued hosting of this event is in line with the governmental resolve to boost the economy even in the most complex conditions, in which the participation of foreign companies and organizations is decisive,” noted Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, Oscar Pérez-Oliva, at the opening ceremony led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.

Oscar Pérez-Oliva, Cuban minister of Foreign Trade and Investment. Photo: DPG/TTC

More than 700 exhibitors from 63 countries in an exhibition area of 19,400 square meters, a figure that exceeds the previous edition, are attending the Fair.

More than 250 domestic companies are among exhibitors, including from the non-state sector with more than 60 Cubans living abroad who do business with their home country.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez participated in the inauguration of the international business event. Photo: DPG/TTC

Official delegations included those from Angola, Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, Honduras, Iran, Mexico, Mozambique, Namibia, Panama, Portugal, Dominican Republic, Russia, and Venezuela, as well representatives of the Latin American and the Caribbean Economic System.

Another 27 chamber of commerce delegations and trade and investment promotion entities are also in Havana to participate in the event.

More than 700 exhibitors from 63 countries are participating in FIHAV 2024. Photo: DPG/TTC

As part of the FIHAV 2024 program, the 7th Investment Forum will present an update of the Portfolio of Opportunities for Foreign Investment and will include panels and business negotiations with an emphasis on the promotion of territorial development.

Pérez-Oliva emphasized that the Fair is being held at a particularly complex time for Cuba, characterized by the unprecedented tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade by the US government, whose extraterritorial effects extend to companies and entrepreneurs from all over the world who, despite pressures and blackmail, continue to do business with Cuba.