More than 205 in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ing com­pa­nies from the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope, Asia, and Latin Amer­i­ca have al­ready reg­is­tered for the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF’s) Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Busi­ness Match­mak­ing Fo­rum: Con­nec­tion to the Glob­al Mar­ket. The match­mak­ing fo­rum will bring to­geth­er more than 2,500 busi­ness lead­ers, in­vestors, gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties, in­no­va­tors, glob­al ex­perts and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­cies to analyse the re­gion’s eco­nom­ic out­look and strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ties and help strength­en its po­si­tion on the glob­al geopo­lit­i­cal map.

The event is sched­uled to take place on Jan­u­ary 29 and 30, 2026, at the Pana­ma Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, Pana­ma City. Ex­porters from across the Caribbean are en­cour­aged to par­tic­i­pate, with the call re­main­ing open un­til De­cem­ber 22, 2025, a re­lease from CAF yes­ter­day said.

It ex­plained that this com­mer­cial gath­er­ing is part of CAF’s flag­ship an­nu­al event, the In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum – Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean 2026.

The con­firmed buy­ers are from Ger­many, Ar­genti­na, Bo­livia, Brazil, Cana­da, Chile, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ecuador, El Sal­vador, Spain, the Unit­ed States, Guatemala, Hon­duras, Italy, Ja­maica, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Paraguay, Pe­ru, and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. CAF not­ed the buy­ers are ac­tive­ly seek­ing sup­pli­ers across a wide range of sec­tors, in­clud­ing agri­food, tex­tiles and ap­par­el, chem­i­cals, man­u­fac­tur­ing, cos­met­ics, soft­ware and tech­nol­o­gy, and con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als.

CAF said it ex­pects the fo­rum to host more than 4,000 one-on-one meet­ings be­tween buy­ers and 300 ex­porters from Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, adding that each par­tic­i­pat­ing en­tre­pre­neur would re­ceive be­tween 16 and 28 pre-sched­uled meet­ings, con­dens­ing what would usu­al­ly re­quire sev­er­al weeks of trav­el and in­di­vid­ual prospect­ing in­to just a day and a half.

“This makes the fo­rum an es­pe­cial­ly valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ty for Caribbean busi­ness­es seek­ing to scale ex­ports, ac­cess new mar­kets, or di­ver­si­fy trad­ing part­ners,” CAF added.

Speak­ing about the event, Ser­gio Díaz-Grana­dos, ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent of CAF said, “This busi­ness round­table is a con­crete op­por­tu­ni­ty for en­tre­pre­neurs from Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. In ad­di­tion to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ple­nary ses­sions of the In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum on the chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties of the re­gion, com­pa­nies will be able to es­tab­lish com­mer­cial and busi­ness part­ner­ships with buy­ers who are ac­tive­ly look­ing for prod­ucts and ser­vices from our re­gion in strate­gic sec­tors such as agribusi­ness, man­u­fac­tur­ing and tech­nol­o­gy.”

CAF fur­ther not­ed that by in­te­grat­ing the busi­ness round­table in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic fo­rum, CAF is en­sur­ing that high-lev­el di­a­logue leads to tan­gi­ble busi­ness out­comes for par­tic­i­pants.

The fo­rum’s agen­da cov­ers trade and in­vest­ment flows, air con­nec­tiv­i­ty and tourism, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, clean en­er­gy, sus­tain­able min­ing, and the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, top­ics that are par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant for the re­gion.

CAF is a de­vel­op­ment bank com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the coun­tries of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life in the re­gion.

Its ac­tions pro­mote sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and serves the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, pro­vid­ing mul­ti­ple prod­ucts and ser­vices to a broad client base of 24 mem­ber coun­tries, pri­vate com­pa­nies, and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.