With economic and strategic point of view, the Caribbean Sea serves as the shortest sea route from the ports of the Atlantic Ocean through the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean. The main ports of the Caribbean: Maracaibo and La Guaira (Venezuela), Cartagena (Colombia), Limon (Costa Rica), Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), Colon (Panama), Santiago de Cuba (Cuba), and others.
A complex system of communication and trade in the Caribbean region provides a high turnover, but much of it occurs in countries outside the region. Goods and resources that are traded within the region are few: rice from Guyana, the wood from Belize, gasoline from Trinidad and Curacao, salt, fertilizer, vegetable oils and fats from the eastern islands, as well as the small number of industrial products. Consumers largely produced in the region of production (bananas, sugar, coffee, rum, bauxite, nickel and oil) are the U.S. and Canada.