Country Programme Peru

Peru is an important agricultural country and its variety of products and ingredients 'with a story behind it' is gaining more and more recognition overseas. There is an ongoing growing European demand for products like specialty coffees, "superfood", Andean grains (e.g. quinoa), natural ingredients for food and non-food products (e.g. Maca and tara), but also organic cotton, trendy Alpaca and sustainable fish species which Peru is able to provide. Market opportunities are particularly strong for organic, sustainable, and fair trade-certified products. At the same time, wealth inequity and environmental degradation are troubling Peru's inhabitants. Most poverty in Peru is concentrated in the rural areas where people rely on agriculture for their livelihood. This provides the majority of jobs for the rural poor. But there is good news as Peru has shown great economic development over the last few years, despite economic crises in other parts of the world. As the Free Trade Agreement between Peru and the EU took effect in March 2013, new opportunities for trade between Peru and Europe emerged. CBI aims to support this positive development in Peru by setting up an integrated country programme for the following 5 sectors that have shown interesting potential for promotion of exports to the European market. These sectors have been identified through extensive Value Chain Analyses, and are also priorities of the Peruvian government, sufficient potential SME participants were identified in each of the sectors, and none of the sectors constitute unacceptable CSR-related image risks for CBI. Furthermore, by focusing mainly on these agricultural sectors CBI will not only be able to improve working and living conditions of farmers involved in the production of these goods, but it will also develop and spread the image of Peru as a supplier of sustainable supply chains. In addition, CBI includes innovative elements in this new programme by focusing on both SMEs and producer groups, but is also looking at strengthening the competitiveness of entire sectors by addressing sector-specific / national export bottlenecks in partnerships with sector committees consisting of current CBI partners like PromPeru, Lima Chamber of Commerce and ADEX and new sector-specific partners. These partners will also enable CBI to implement the programme effectively as they will support in promotion of the programme and selection of the companies that have a high potential. Next to that, through collaboration the programme can be implemented efficiently because certain activities will be partly implemented and/or financed by these local partners. Another innovative element is matchmaking between exporter and importer from the start of the programme and creating so-called lighthouse projects.