A Country Against the Wall

author/photographer Edi Hirose
written by Gary Legget

 

The domestic consumption of cement increased 10% in a single year. Exports increased by 30%. Annual growth rate reached 9% and inflation stabilized at around 3%. The mining sector grew 23% in a single month (mostly on account of China’s demand for copper) and the poverty rate dropped from 54% to 27% in less than a decade. gdp per capita quadrupled in two decades and the country consistently came in second in the World Bank’s ease of doing business ranking for Latin America. Bloomberg rated it as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and someone called it a Latin Tiger. In a word that may seem a bit outdated at this point, but which effectively captures all the facts: Peru was doing well.