The latest regional coordination meeting on CAFTA closed in Honduras Friday with Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador agreeing to negotiate as a bloc with the United States for the free trade agreement.

The ninth and final round of CAFTA negotiations will be held Dec. 8-12 in Washington, Costa Rica's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday. Observers of the negotiations believe the agreement will be signed next March.

Attending the current negotiating session were officials responsible for services,  investment, textiles, and environmental issues.

On services and investment, delegates discussed financial services and trade in cross-border services.

On textiles, negotiations focused on regulations and rules of origin.

On environment, Central America and the United States attained "important advances" on topics to be contained in the agreement, the ministry said without outlining specifics.

The ministry pointed out that on market access, it should be possible to utilize the  Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) to cover Costa Rican products.

"We have reached an agreement with the United States which basically means that already all of our exports sent to the United States can be dealt with under the CBI," said the Costa Rican negotiator in chief, Anabel Gonzalez.

She said "issues related to conditions covering the export of US products to Costa Rica were accorded with the exception of sensitive products on which we will work intensively in the final round."