Peru Promising for Exports
- Details
- Category: Business
- Published on Wednesday, December 29 2010 05:30
- Written by Rod Hughes
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With a free trade treaty being negotiated with Lima, the Foreign Trade Promotion agency (Procomer) is ahead of the game, releasing a thorough 97-page report on export opportunities, even down to naming principal ports in Peru.
The report is packed with valuable data, after months of study that turned up principal needs in the South American country’s populace. These include frozen fruits and vegetables, cleaning supplies, a whole range of personal care items like skin creams, shampoo and hair dyes, as well as faucets and Costa Rican-made flooring.
Procomer has obviously done its homework, with average income of various social classes and principal imports and exports clearly explained. Although the opportunities appear rosy, the Chamber of Food Industries (Cacia) here appears reserved about the trade pact negotiations.
Cacia’s director Mario Montero explained that Peru has a host of restrictive tariffs and thickets of bureaucratic regulations to overcome before a viable treaty becomes reality. If these hurdles can be overcome, Montero says that more than 100 local food companies would just at the chance to export.
One of the oldest multinationals in Costa Rica, Bridgestone/Firestone already exports tires to that country. In 2008, Costa Rica exported $35 million to Peru and imported $24 million.
But this is still tiny compared with Costa Rica’s biggest trading partners, the United States, which bought $2.9 billion in 2009, according to Procomer.