Peru also climbs the podium of America in non-traditional exports
Published on 05 August 2019
Peru is the second Latin American country that registered the second highest growth in non-traditional exports between January and May 2019.
Peru's export offer has traditionally been mining, as well as agricultural thanks to commodities such as coffee and sugar; raw materials such as cotton and alpaca fibers, and fisheries for indirect human consumption products such as flour and oil. However, since the 90’s, the portfolio has diversified into fruits, vegetables, and aquaculture and fishery products for direct human consumption.
The growth that the country's economy has achieved and the formation of a formerly almost non-existent middle class in which almost half of the population is included today are largely the result of the latter's advance in the international market. And in fact, after almost three decades of expansion, there is still room for accelerated growth, and only tourism and the well-managed Amazonian timber industry offer comparable acceleration potential.
For now, Peru is the second Latin American country that gains more land in the international market with products that are part of the new generation of foreign trade. This has been driven by a free-flowing business activity that allocates its resources to where it finds the best opportunities, in contrast to products inherited from pre-Columbian times, or developed under statist or large-scale schemes. In the following table, you can see the good performance of the overall portfolio:
With some exceptions in products more sensitive to prices because of a consolidated offer that grows at lower rates, and greater competition, the result has been very positive. The product that continues to advance at a particularly high rate is the blueberry, introduced to the Peruvian coast less than a decade ago, and harvested in times when production from the rest of the world is low.
In general, the main factor that favors Peruvian non-traditional exports is to have more hours of sunshine in desert, fertile and irrigable areas, which has turned vacant lots into green mantles generating thousands of jobs. On the other hand, in addition to the productivity and qualities of the fruits and vegetables resulting from this comparative advantage, the case of blueberries is repeated in most products and the country exports to counter-contracting, that is, when the rest of the countries do not produce , or they do it in smaller quantities.
In addition, a sea rich in food for fish and shellfish is added: plankton and zooplankton, which has the Humboldt current, allow abundant reproduction. This occurs in a coastal area of ??more than 2000 kilometers, as part of a coastline of 3000 kilometers in which the upper third receives warmer waters through the El Niño current, which allow different types of species.
With all this, the positioning of Peru is enviable and allows to counteract the slowdown in lower public investment and the difficulties caused by the commercial war on the mineral market in its economy. According to the Central Reserve Bank of Peru, between January and May the country's non-traditional exports grew 5.3% and were the second most advanced, after those of Mexico, which made it 6.7%. The third country with the best performance in this aspect was Chile, with 3.7%, which shows that the global market is complicated and the figures shown are a luxury in the middle of a complex environment due to international policy issues.
As additional information, the participation of the main destinations of non-traditional products of Peru is shown.
It is important to note the importance of the United States and China as destinations. Both are protagonists of a commercial war that goes through an uncertain truce, which is expected, there is an outcome that unleashes the knot that today holds the entire international economy, especially for the expectations of consumers.
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