Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Info provided by the
American Chamber of Commerce of Peru (AmCham Peru)

But in observing the evolution of non traditional exports, it is also quite evident that not only mining exports have expanded but non traditional products with a high added value, have also gone up. Products like asparagus, artichokes, cotton t-shirts, arts and crafts, chemical products, amongst many others have increased their sales globally, basically stimulated by the existent preferences of tariff free access towards markets with a high purchasing capacity like the U.S., and Europe through unilateral regimes like the ATPDEA and the now called SGP plus.

Therefore, when analyzing the evolution of Peruvian exports to the world we can observe that in the year 2007, they expanded in 18% compared to the year before and they were precisely the non traditional sector ones that revealed a higher increase, reaching an expansion of 21% during the same period. This is shown when revising the numbers for the U.S. market where an increase of 14% is registered in non traditional exports during the first trimester of this year compared to the same period the year before.

Amongst the most dynamic non traditional sectors we can emphasize: textile manufactures, agro industry and metallurgy, which represented together more than 75% of the total of non traditional products exported to the United States between the months of January and June 2008, but non traditional fish industry and the wood sector have also expanded their sales not only in a bigger volume of shipments but in a higher added value of its products as well.

Hence, dear reader, today as we face an approved Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Peru (APC) as well as other commercial agreements now being negotiated, our country is confronted with a big array of opportunities that will allow us to diversify our exporting offers and increase the non traditional products we can export with its consequent effects over production and employment. Thousands of products with a huge potential in the international markets are waiting on cue for private investment. Let’s start discovering and taking advantage of them.


*Translated by Joceline Frank

Frankly Speaking Inc.