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Peru will spend $24 billion to expand agricultural land

Peru will spend $24 billion to expand agricultural land

The Peruvian Minister of Agriculture, Angel Manero, announced on Monday that $24 billion would be spent in public-private partnerships to improve irrigation throughout the Andean country. This is in order to increase the size of the farmland by approximately one million hectares.

The additional farmland is larger than Puerto Rico's entire island.

Manero said at a press event that the funds will be used over three to seven year to jumpstart 22 new or stalled project across Peru's coastline, highlands, and Amazon. These should be awarded from 2025 to mid-2026.

He said the most important project was the "Trasvase Maranon" project, which is valued at $7 billion and will transport water from the Maranon River up to the Pacific Coast, irrigating more than 300,000.

Manero said that the package will include the Chinecas Project, estimated at $3.5 billion on Peru's north coast, and the Pampas Verdes Project in the south which is expected to be around $4 billion.

Speaking at the same Press Conference, Economy Minister Jose Salardi said that over 85% of projects will be developed by public-private partnerships.

According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, Peru's agricultural products, mainly blueberries, grew by over 20% in 2012. The government aims to reach $40 billion by 2040. This will be helped by planned exports of beef and pig to China.

Peru's Central Bank has stated that the new tariffs announced in the U.S. will have a limited impact on South America, as the fruit it exports is a complement to the supplies not available in North America due to seasonal factors.

The government wants agricultural exports, not mining, to be the main economic engine of the country by 2050. Peru is the third largest copper supplier in the world.

Manero announced in January that he would be building large-scale irrigation systems along the coast, which should result in an additional 250,000 hectares this year and 500,000 by 2026. (Reporting and writing by Marco Aquino, Sarah Morlandl, Editing by Brendan O'Boyle & Aurora Ellis).

(source: Reuters)