By Roberto de la Tore, president of the Lima Chamber of Commerce
We enter APEC in 1998 with US$3,000 million of exports, and last year shipments to the member economies of this forum exceeded US$44,000 million, which shows the benefits of belonging to this group.
Now we have the FTA with Hong Kong and we must consider that all the trade agreements that Peru signs are important because they allow access to new markets. This opens up cooperation, eliminates obstacles to trade, allows customs cooperation.
Within the framework of APEC, the optimization of the FTA with China has also been signed, which is something that allows us to improve the agreement we had with that country.
President Dina Boluarte recently also mentioned the opening to investments, which is positive because she commented on the priority they are giving to infrastructure works, which allows gaps to be closed.
We see that the Government is putting all its effort into increasing investments in the country, and we feel that it is making efforts to attract these investments, which are the ones that generate the most employment.
She also commented on the monetary and fiscal strengths that Peru has. Indeed, we have monetary strength, but not fiscal strength because our deficit remains at 4% of GDP, which indicates that we will not be able to meet the fiscal goal for 2024 for the second consecutive year. This rule will not be met, furthermore , is one that was modified, since before the goal was 2.4% deficit, and then it was raised to 2.8%.
What has to be considered, then, is that our greatest strength, our flag, has always been all the macroeconomic indicators. That is what has allowed us to grow, generating confidence in investors, in risk rating agencies, so we must maintain that.
For next year we hope that there will be greater fiscal discipline to be able to meet the goals. We are good in the rest of the indicators, but we should be good in everything.
