MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peruvian economy rebounds and expands 8.76% in first quarter

Oil, mining, fisheries are the main exports of Peru

The Peruvian economy expanded 8.76% in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same period a year ago, the highest rate in the last 17 months, according to the head of the country’s Statistics Office, Renán Quispe.

This means the Peruvian economy expanded in the first quarter at an annualized 6.03%, when all forecasts, domestic and from multilateral organizations, anticipate a GDP growth of 5.5% for 2010 with inflation in the range of 2% to 2.5%.

Quispe said the encouraging March performance was based on three main areas: construction which expanded 24%; manufacturing, 15% and retail, 10.6%. These results reflect overseas demand recovery and the increase in non traditional produce exports from agriculture, fisheries, chemicals, steel and metals and non metal mining; and a strong showing in prices for the so called traditional exports such as oil and derivates plus gold, silver, lead and iron.

Domestic demand also placed a prominent role basically through government expenditure and retail sales, helped by a significant increase in investment and construction activities and the import of capital goods.

Quispe also revealed that the economically active population, PEA, and with jobs in the capital Lima increased by 4.5% (187.000 people) during the February, March, April quarter. Of the total PEA employed in metropolitan Lima, 55.3% (2:387.100 people) are men while 44.7% (1:929.000 people) are women, according to a technical report on the Labour market in metropolitan Lima, where almost half of the country’s population lives.

PEA actually employed in metropolitan Lima increased 9.4% (191.400 population) in the first quarter with average income in the range of 380 US dollars, which is 3.6% higher than a year ago.