Peru Seeks $24 Billion in Investments to Boost Agribusiness Sector

(Bloomberg) -- Peru is taking steps to launch a historic expansion of the South American nation’s booming agricultural fields in the coming year and is trying to lure unprecedented levels of private investment to achieve it.   

The country is seeking $24 billion in irrigation investments, of which it is offering the vast majority to private investors willing to participate in public-private partnerships. Peru has become a powerful agribusiness player in recent years and is now the world’s top exporter of blueberries and table grapes, as well as a top exporter of avocados. Now it thinks it can do much more than that, with authorities eyeing new fields devoted to cotton and sugar cane. 

But the timeline is particularly aggressive and shows that President Dina Boluarte, one of the world’s most unpopular leaders, is already running against the clock as she tries to cement a legacy. 

The goal, announced on Monday by her agriculture and finance ministers, is to adjudicate 22 irrigation project before her departure July of next year. From there, it could take up to seven years before the different projects are built, said Agriculture Minister Angel Manero in a press conference. To be sure, ambitious infrastructure projects in Peru are often delayed by many years, sometimes decades. 

The top listed projects include diverting part of the Maranon river that flows east to the Amazon, so that it can flow west and irrigate new lands, requiring a $7 billion investment. Another $4 billion project would entail building new dams and a hydroelectric plant in Southern Peru. 

Peru exported a record $13 billion in agricultural products in 2024. While Manero set a target last year in an interview with Bloomberg to boost those exports to $30 billion by 2040, he’s now going further and bigger announcing a new target of $50 billion by 2045. 

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