Peruvian official defends formalization process

The Peruvian high commissioner for Mining Formalization, Antonio Fernández Jerí, defended the process established by the Peruvian government to formalize the country’s informal miners. The high commissioner fought back against what he believes are incorrect and misleading statistics regarding informal mining in Peru and highlighted some promising developments occurring in southern Peru, in Puno.

Jerí rebutted the claim that there are more than 350,000 informal miners in the country, a number first introduced by the economist Hernando de Soto. Jerí also emphasized that 600 miners have already completed the formalization process, and blamed the regional governments for not supporting the formalization effort. He believes that after the regional elections, these governments will be more supportive.

Nonetheless, he insisted that the Peruvian government is committed to this process, saying, “The Peruvian state, unlike all of the previous administrations, has made the decision to generate a normative framework to criminalize an activity that causes great damage to the ecosystem, exploits natural resources, and generates tax evasion and other crimes.”

In unrelated news, Reuters reported that the Peruvian Ministry of Finance revised downwards its projections for the country’s 2015 GDP growth, from 4.8% to 4.25%. This rate is still higher than the growth achieved in 2014, which was dragged down to 2.35% due to poor performance in the country’s mining and fishing sectors. However, Credit Suisse announced a distinctly positive outlook on Peru’s future growth prospects, projecting that the country’s economy will grow 5.6% in 2016, thanks to large infrastructure projects.