By Marco Aquino
LIMA (Reuters) -Peru’s economic growth this year should surpass the 3.1% rate previously estimated, President Dina Boluarte said in a speech on Sunday, another sign of improvement as the country recovers from a recession last year.
Peru’s central bank in June forecast gross domestic product growth at 3.1% for this year, after the economy contracted 0.6% in 2023.
“This solid performance reflects the resilience of the Peruvian economy. We committed to recovering our growth capacity and we are on that path,” Boluarte said in a speech to Congress.
For years one of South America’s top performers, Peru’s economy struggled last year in the aftermath of adverse weather events, lower private investment and anti-government protests that hampered the Andean country’s mining industry.
The government of one of the world’s top suppliers of copper has since spent millions of dollars to boost the mining sector, which saw investment fall 10% last year.
Boluarte also announced plans to boost the country’s infrastructure sector, by allocating 17 projects worth $3.2 billion in the remainder of the year.
She also spoke of the recent re-launch of the development of Grupo Mexico’s Tia Maria copper mine in the southern Arequipa region, after the project was paused for more than a decade as communities protested environmental impacts. Protests left six people dead between 2011 and 2015.
“The project has a vital importance in re-stimulating mining investment,” Boluarte said. “Tia Maria is not a project we are imposing, that is a false narrative by ideological sectors that refuse to admit that mining strengthens our economic growth.”
The restart triggered a small protest earlier this month, and this week Grupo Mexico said it would revise its planned $1.4 billion investment by the end of this year.
Boluarte said Tia Maria should bring Arequipa some 400 million soles ($108 million) a year.
Peruvian prosecutors last May accused Boluarte of bribery and illicit enrichment, and she is also being investigated over the deaths of more than 50 people in protests during her first months in office.
Boluarte denies the accusations and argues that security forces responded proportionally to violence from protesters who took to the streets following the ouster and imprisonment of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, after he tried to shutter Congress.
She said she would formally call general elections, which are planned for 2026, by next April.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Leslie Adler)
