Peru's Business Leaders Outline 5 Urgent Tasks to Prevent Economic Slowdown

Peru's next president will inherit an economy at a crossroads. The votes are still being counted, but the country's business establishment has already drawn up a list of five tasks that cannot wait—decisions that will determine whether the nation accelerates toward growth or slides into stagnation.

The consensus among business leaders and economists is stark: the incoming administration must move fast. In the first hundred days, it needs to send clear signals that it intends to tackle the violence ravaging the country, reform a state bloated with inefficiency and corruption, and strip away the bureaucratic barriers that strangle investment. Without these moves, they warn, private capital will simply go elsewhere.

Jorge Zapata, who leads Peru's main business confederation, frames the challenge as a matter of wasted potential. The country has generated enormous wealth from its economic model and commodity exports, he notes, yet somehow managed to squander it. Seventy-five billion soles sit tied up in stalled construction projects—money that could have built schools and water systems instead. Zapata argues Peru has the raw ingredients for five to seven percent annual growth, even seven percent is within reach. The geography is right. The commodity prices are favorable. What's missing is a coherent national project and the political will to execute it. "We need to unblock, deregulate, build, and redistribute," he says.

The security crisis looms largest in every conversation. Felipe James, leading the industrial manufacturers' association, emphasizes that the first hundred days are critical for signaling how the government will handle both immediate threats and the El Niño weather phenomenon bearing down on the country. But security is not merely a law-and-order issue—it is an economic one. When entrepreneurs must divert resources to protect themselves, their families, and their businesses, those resources vanish from productive investment. The drag on growth is measurable and severe. James also pushes for a shock of deregulation and warns that Peru cannot afford to enter the next election cycle split between a pro-system party and an anti-system one. That fracture, he suggests, is itself a threat to stability.

José Espantoso, representing real estate developers, makes a different but complementary case. He argues that the housing deficit—Peru needs two hundred thousand new homes annually but currently builds forty thousand—is not separate from poverty reduction. When a family receives a formal home, it gains access to water and sewage. Housing, he contends, should rank alongside education and health as a central policy pillar. This requires the state to prepare and sell sanitized land to private developers at predictable prices, with stable financing programs. It also requires a specialized unit to combat land trafficking. The current system, where subsidies shift with each change of finance minister, destroys the predictability investors need.

Mercedes Araoz, an economist and former finance minister, trains her focus on the fiscal trap Congress has created. The legislature has seized the power to initiate spending, which means the executive has lost control of the deficit. Public payroll costs keep expanding. Pension schemes are structurally unsustainable. The incoming president will have to challenge these measures in the Constitutional Court, she says, or watch the fiscal situation deteriorate beyond repair. She also flags Petroperú, the state oil company, as requiring a complete governance overhaul—fewer management layers, disposal of unproductive assets, and a transparent operating model.

Hugo Perea, chief economist for BBVA Research in Peru, sees an opportunity window that must not be squandered. Private investment grew thirteen percent in the first quarter. Commodity prices remain elevated. Domestic demand is strong. But this favorable moment can evaporate if the government sends mixed signals or allows insecurity to fester. He emphasizes that the incoming administration must lower the political temperature. If campaign rhetoric created uncertainty, it must be abandoned. The new government should preserve the independence of the central bank, avoid populist temptations, and focus on the unglamorous work of improving public sector execution. Better management alone, he estimates, could push growth from three percent to five percent.

What emerges from these conversations is a portrait of an economy with genuine potential but fragile confidence. Peru is not facing structural collapse. It is facing a choice about whether to seize the moment or squander it. The business community is signaling what it needs: security, state reform, deregulation, infrastructure, and fiscal discipline. Whether the next president listens will determine whether Peru accelerates or stalls.