Peru may lead the economic growth of Latin America in the next 5 years due to good results registered in its macroeconomic policy in recent years and if the next government keeps the same line of action, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) reported Wednesday.
“The next Peruvian government must follow current macroeconomic policy because it is effective,” the President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Luis Alberto Moreno said.
He pointed out that amid international crisis, which has shaken global economy, Peru is one of the few countries that still make progress.
“Peru has demonstrated to be the best prepared country to face crisis in Latin America,” he told Andina News Agency.
He said that the country was growing at a rate of almost 10 percent and despite global financial crisis, Peru will recover faster than any other country of Latin America.
“This year, when it is expected that Latin American economy will fall almost 2 percent, in the case of Peru, we will register a growth from 1.5 to 2 percent,” he added.
Photo: President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) signs an agreement with Australian government to benefit more than 100,000 Peruvian microentreprises. Photo: ANDINA / Carlos Lezama.
In order to promote tourism in Cusco and Loreto, their regional governments will implement a tourist corridor called “Andean-Amazon,” local authorities announced Thursday.
Cusco Governor Hugo Gonzales Sayan said that they have signed an interinstitutional cooperation agreement on tourism development and exchange of experiences on this subject.
“As a first step, we train the economic and tourism development offices of every region to work on this issue, so they can present specific initiatives in 2 months, in order to achieve the corridor,” he told Andina.
He pointed out that the goal is to connect the Peruvian jungle with Cusco, one of the most visited places of the country, so that visitors who arrive to this city can also travel to Loreto easily.
“The agreement gives us huge possibilities to develop this sector in Cusco, also in Madre de Dios, Ucayali and Loreto,” he said.
The Inca Citadel of Machu Picchu, the Archeological Park of Sacsayhuaman, the Sacred Valley of the Incas and many other ancient sites and temples are located in Cusco.
Peru expects to resolve this week the sensitive issues of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the European Union, reported today Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism (Mincetur).
On Monday, Peru and the European Union began an additional meeting on the sidelines of the negotiations of the bilateral FTA, and will finish on September 25 in Brussels (Belgium).
“There is a good level of progress in these negotiations but there are still some sensitive subjects that are not resolved yet, but we hope to resolve them in this new round,” said Peru's minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism, Martín Pérez.
He explained that the negotiations are not only focused in the Market Access chapter, but also focused in subjects equally important like the democratic clause, the human rights clause and another one of participation of the civil society in the implementation of the FTA.
“Clauses that we consider are not necessary in the FTA but our counterpart does, so we have to negotiate little by little,” he told RRP.
Peru’s gold production jumped by 6.35 percent in August, silver production rose 3.54 percent and tin production 2.65 percent, for the sixth consecutive month, the Energy & Mines Ministry (MEM) reported Monday.
Peru’s gold production increased to 16 million 660,305 fine grams, which represented an increase of 6.35 percent in relation to 15 million 664,996 grams registered in August 2008.
This variation was due, among other factors, to the increase of production of San Simon mine (42 percent), Yanacocha mine (20 percent), Layratuma (18 percent) and Barrick Misquichilca (9 percent).
In the other hand, Arasi and Ares mining company fell by 19 percent each one.
Silver production totaled 335,503 fine kilograms, 3.54 percent more than the production registered in the same month last year (324,018 kilograms).
This raise was due to Suyamarca mine, which increased its production from 9,855 fine kilograms in August 2008 to 27,752 kilograms in August 2009, as well as raises of Colquisiri and Bateas mining companies of 108 and 63 percent, respectively.
Other mining companies such as Aruntani, Buenaventura, Ares, Argentum, Casapalca, Milpo, Chungar and Barrick Misquichilca also increased their production. (Andina)
A Peruvian navy vessel is testing the full spectrum of its abilities this month during the multinational exercise Fuerzas Aliadas Panamax 2009.
The Peruvian frigate BAP Quiñones (FM 58) is part of the Combined Task Force Pacific, which consists of vessels from nine partner nations training to defend the Pacific Ocean end of the Panama Canal.
Quiñones' commanding officer, Peruvian Navy Capt. Alberto Alcala, said FA Panamax 2009 is testing Quiñones' resolve and ability to perform special missions, while maintaining normal underway operations.
"We want to increase our interoperability with other nations' navies, since the focus of this operation is to protect the Panama Canal," Alcala was quoted as saying by dvids specialized website.
"Our presence here is also to collaborate with the fight against narco-trafficking."
CTF Pacific, commanded by Peruvian Rear Adm. Edmundo Deville Del Campo, consists of vessels from Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.
Another task force, commanded by Colombian Rear Adm. Roberto Garcia Marquez, is operating in the Caribbean Sea with U.S., Panamanian, Dutch and Uruguayan vessels.
FA Panamax 2009 is one of the largest multinational training exercises in the world, and is taking place in the waters off the coasts of Panama from Sept. 11-22 with the participation of civil and military forces. The exercise was first held in 2003 with three partner nations.
More than 20 vessels and a dozen aircraft are involved in the exercise. Participants are focusing on a variety of responses to any request from the government of Panama to protect and guarantee safe passage of traffic through the Panama Canal, ensure its neutrality, and respect national sovereignty.
Simulated ground forces are also participating at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.
Peruvian Navy Ensign Alejandra Vasquez, weapons division officer aboard Quiñones, said the exercise has trained her to think and act rapidly. (Andina)
Peru ranks first in Latin America and sixth in the world in investment attraction for mining exploration projects, according to Peru Report’s author Jonathan Cavanagh.
“We are first in investment attraction for mining exploration projects in Latin America while Chile ranks second,” he said.
Cavanagh added that Peru is one of the top five mining countries in the world as it gathers a great number of minerals in its reserves.
He noted that Peru has already surpassed Mexico as the world’s largest silver producer.
During the 29th mining convention held in Arequipa, Jonathan Cavanagh presented the book entitled Las Minas del Peru´: Top Mining Companies in Peru, which was edited by Perú Top Publications.
With some of the richest mineral reserves in the world, Peru is one of the highest producing countries of precious & base metals in Latin America.
Previously inaccessible regions are now becoming available through modern technology and equipment, making the high diversity of marketable minerals an extremely attractive prospect. In total, Peru holds about 16 percent of the world's known mineral reserves. (Andina)
Peru’s Minister of Transport and Communications Enrique Cornejo and his Brazilian counterpart Helio Costa signed in Brasilia a cooperation agreement to implement the Japanese-Brazilian standard for its digital terrestrial television system (SBTVD) in Peru, reported Friday Peru’s Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC).
According to Cornejo, the digital TV service is expected to cover 54 percent of the country by 2015, which requires investments of about $ 80 million by Peruvian television networks.
On April 23, 2009, Peru decided to adopt Japan’s Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial (ISDB-T) Standard, also adopted by Brazil, which is why both countries are interested in setting a permanent exchange of information on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT).
Cornejo explained that the signed agreement will foster industrial exchange, allowing to establish a joint work program on industrial cooperation to promote greater trade integration between Brazil and Peru in different aspects of the DTT process.
The agreement will intensify technological cooperation between Brazil's National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) and Peru’s Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC). It will provide technical support for the implementation of digital TV transition and allow MTC access to the systems managed by Anatel. (Andina)
Adventurers about to volunteer abroad in Vietnam or take a gap year in Peru or Africa may be pleased to learn that they are among the world’s top countries to visit.
This is according to the readers of tourism magazine Wanderlust, who voted Namibia as the second best country in the world.
The Wanderlust Travel Awards 2009 also placed New Zealand as the world’s third greatest location, while Peru came sixth with 95 per cent of the vote.
Vietnam placed eight and Indonesia ninth, but the top spot was claimed by the land of geisha, pioneering technology and culinary delights – Japan.
Two great-value South-East Asian countries – Indonesia and Vietnam – also entered the top ten, while there was overwhelming support for Antarctica and the Galapagos – which aren’t countries," stated Wanderlust.
Wanderlust is the UK's leading travel magazine for independent-minded and adventurous travellers looking for world class information and advice about where to go, what to visit and how to get there. (Andina)
The Washington Post's reporter, Jason Wilson, writes about his experiences with Peruvian pisco, which he started drinking 10 years ago saying it's much more "elegant" than either the caipirinhas or mojitos.
"I started drinking pisco sours about a decade ago, right around when the ceviche trend was up and coming", he said in an article called Peru's Drink From the Desert.
"In fact, as a critic for a mid-Atlantic city magazine in the early 2000s, I was moved to call the pisco sour "infinitely more elegant" than either the caipirinhas or mojitos that most bartenders were still just learning how to make".
Pisco: It was a grape-based brandy, clear, not aged in oak, with a bracing and rough 80-plus-proof kick if you drank it straight, which you never did. You used it in a pisco sour or a pisco punch. The Peruvians and Chileans were always arguing over who invented it and who should control the name. Beyond all that, what else did you need to know?
Then I went to Peru a few weeks ago, and now I realize that I hadn't really known very much at all about my friend pisco. I was traveling with a handful of bartenders from San Francisco and with two fellows, Walter Moore and Carlos Romero, who plan to launch a premium pisco in the United States in the coming year. On this trip, Romero, the master distiller, and Moore, his American partner, were developing their acholado, or blended pisco.
Lima was indeed the great culinary hot spot that my colleague Jane Black so vividly described a few months ago ("Marinated in the Morning, Grilled at Night," April 1). But then we rolled out of Lima on a five-hour bus ride south, and the landscape soon turned to desert. We passed the historic port of Pisco and arrived in the viticultural center of Ica, surrounded by giant mountains of sand. There is almost no rainfall. Who knew you could grow grapes in such a place?
We stayed at the oasis of Huacachina, an old resort filled with dune buggies and backpackers, said to be haunted by a witch in the middle of the lagoon who eats men at night. At least one man goes missing every year, according to legend. At night, one traveling companion wandered alone down to the water and claimed, totally freaking out, to have seen the witch. (The jury is out on whether that sighting was pisco-related.)
Peruvian pisco, it turns out, is just as strange and surprising as the region it comes from. The country has more than 300 pisco producers, and the diversity of tastes pressed from the odd varietals of desert grapes is staggering.
Quebranta -- tannic, non-aromatic and very dry -- is the predominant grape, grown along with aromatic varieties such as Italia, Torontel and even Moscatel. All these grapes make pretty terrible wine. But once distilled and left to rest for a few months, they often create a white spirit that's as complex as a white spirit can be. It's important that pisco be produced only from the first press of grapes, and not from the skins, stems and seeds, as is grappa -- and, unfortunately, many low-quality piscos.
Quebranta pisco is labeled "pisco puro"; acholado is a blend of Quebranta and other aromatic grapes and is often more expensive. The dry, non-aromatic Quebranta is the preferred grape of Peruvians; it's used most in blending, and it's probably what most Americans have experienced in their pisco sours. But some younger-generation distillers are experimenting with a higher ratio of the aromatic grapes in their acholados.
After dinner one night, our group tasted a single-varietal pisco made from only the Italia grape. The result was a floral digestif with subtle, fruity notes. The Peruvians among us didn't like it. Many of the Americans, including me, liked it very much. This was a pisco you could enjoy straight, and frankly, it was a better digestif than all but the very best grappas. We suggested that Americans would prefer an acholado with a higher percentage of these aromatics.
But that spirit set off a debate that would continue for days. When blending for the American market, should the producer hold true to what a Peruvian connoisseur recognizes as a fine pisco? Or should the acholado reflect what an American palate would recognize as a fine and approachable distilled spirit? I have no idea what Romero and Moore eventually will decide to do with their acholado pisco. But we get so little good pisco in the United States, I hope they veer toward the latter.
The pisco consumed most often here is the Chilean brand Capel, which sells a mere 15,000 cases each year. After tasting dozens of piscos in Peru, I solemnly advise you to avoid Capel. There are a handful of fine Peruvian piscos on the market, including BarSol, which imports both a Quebranta and an acholado.
Closer to home, however, is Macchu Pisco, which is produced and imported by Bethesda resident (and Peruvian native) Melanie Asher. Macchu Pisco's Quebranta (about $25) is full-flavored and approachable. But its acholado La Diablada (about $35), with its floral and peppery notes, is perhaps an even better place for newbies to start.
Try either one in the accompanying pisco sour recipe I adapted from a hotel barman in Huacachina, who dared to use a blender instead of a cocktail shaker. The drink goes down easy, but don't worry. I promise you won't see any witches. (Andina)
Brazil’s plans to buy French fighter jets confirms a trend across Latinamerica that is based in recent history and the proclivity of US lawmakers to put political restrictions on what customers can and cannot do with their purchases.
This had convinced many Latinamerican countries that it is more reliable and less politically sensitive to acquire military hardware from Western Europe, Russia and lately from the emerging China and in the near future possibly from India, Mercopress reported.
In Brazil's case this helps explain in part why France's Rafale emerged victorious over the US F/A-18 Super Hornet and Sweden's Gripen NG, according to the planned purchase announced on Monday; plus the 9 billion US dollars cooperation agreement for the acquisition of submarines, one of them nuclear powered and 50 choppers.
While the Rafale was an excellent choice anyway on performance criteria, Brazilian officials said it was France's offer to share all of the plane's technology that really sealed the deal.
The technology behind the F/A-18 and the Gripen (which uses some US components such as the engine) are subject to approval from Washington - which has in the past vetoed any transactions with of which it disapproved.
That was the case under President Jimmy Carter, who embargoed military sales to South American dictatorships in the 1970s. Argentina as a result turned to Europe - buying French Super-Etendard fighters with Exocet missiles that subsequently proved so successful and fearsome for the British Task Force sent to recover the Falkland Islands taken over by the Argentine military dictatorship in 1982.
More recently, former US president George W. Bush slapped an arms embargo on populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who has close relations with Iran and is accused of not doing enough in the “war on terror”.
As a result, and with no spares for his US military hardware, Chavez went shopping to Russia which has proved only to happy to sell him 24 sophisticated Sukhoi fighter jets, 51 combat helicopters, missile-launchers and 100,000 AK-103 assault rifles for a total 4.4 billion US dollars. He also purchased 24 light jets from China and turbine anti guerrilla aircrafts from Brazil.
Across the rest of South America the situation is not different.
Peru although now friendly with the United States, had longstanding ties with Moscow. It has Russian MiGs and Sukhois and French Mirages in its air force, German submarines and Italian frigates in its navy. The army has US tanks, but they are backed up by French, German, Italian, Brazilian and Russian armoured vehicles.
Even Colombia, the United States' main ally in the region, is not relying entirely on Washington, which has given 5.5 billion US dollars in mostly military aid over the past decade to fight drug trafficking and rebels.
The Colombian air force has 15 Black Hawk helicopters but its pilots also fly French Mirages (and Israeli-modified Mirages Kfirs) and Brazilian Super Tucanos for jungle warfare. Colombia is also scheduled to receive five Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters and is asking France and Germany to look at modernising its navy.
In Chile, cooperation with European suppliers goes back to the start of the 20th century with the British supplying the Navy and Air Force, and Germany traditionally the Army. Currently the Navy is undergoing a renewal process with British and Dutch frigates, French submarines and Israeli torpedo boats. The Air Force opted for F-16s from the US as part of the free trade deal signed with Washington in the mid nineties plus other refurbished F16s from Europe and French Mirages. The Army is equipped with German Leopard tanks.
The smaller countries, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay have also diversified their sources of supply from the traditional US military hardware to Europe, Russia, China, Israel, Brazil and lately even Iran.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, statistics, an “arms race” seems to be emerging in Latinamerican arms race, which says regional defence spending grew 50 per cent between 1999 and 2008. (Andina)
Ferrocarril Transandino (Fetransa), rail concessionaire in southern and southeastern Peru, is assessing a project to build a railway to connect Peru with Brazil, Fetransa General Manager Romulo Guidino said.
“There is a possibility to connect Tirapata (near Juliaca), passing by Puerto Maldonado (Madre de Dios), with Iñapari (in border with Brazil),” he told Andina News Agency.
He pointed out that near Iñapari is located the Brazilian city of Asis, area with which the railway will be connected.
“Brazil is also assessing a railway extension to Asis in order to establish a rail corridor that connects Matarani port (Arequipa) with the Brazilian Railroad Network,” he said.
He added that this project is in the process of information collection and analysis of the proposal.
“A project of this type represents an investment of over US$1 billion, with an average construction time from 5 to 7 years,” he said. (Andina)
Peru and other countries in the region such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia show signs that they are recovering from the global economic crisis or are about to do so, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said Wednesday.
"All these countries show signs that they have overcame the crisis or are about to do it," ECLAC expert Jürgen Weller told DPA.
According to Weller, the economic recovery is finally spreading to Latin America driven by the stabilization of its nations.
Peru’s Ministry of Economy and Finance said recently that the Peruvian economy is already showing signs of recovery from the adverse impact of the global financial crisis and it would post a 2.2% growth by the end of 2009.
Finance minister Luis Carranza confirmed today at the Congress that the Peruvian economy will be one of the few economies in the region that will see positive growth.
ECLAC forecasted that Brazil, Chile, Peru and Panama will lead the economic growth in the region, averaging 3.0 percent in 2010. (Andina)
