Peru Country Profile

Snapshot of the Peru Country Profile


The collapse of the Fujimori administration amidst major corruption scandals raised awareness about the need for Peru to adopt a long-term anti-corruption strategy. However, national anti-corruption efforts have been characterised by a high degree of inconsistency and a lack of a national anti-corruption policy. Anti-corruption has primarily focussed on the offences of the Fujimori era and on other high-profile corruption crimes that took place in the past, whereas 'everyday corruption' has not been attacked in the same way. Attempts to combat corruption have been restricted, and many initiatives have proven unsuccessful or have been abandoned. Moreover, President Garcia struggled to deal with a major corruption scandal over oil contracts in October 2008, which forced his entire cabinet to resign. In an effort to restore public confidence in his administration, President Garcia appointed Yehude Simon, a leftist regional governor, as the new Prime Minister and stated that his first priority is to fight corruption. Companies continue to identify corruption as a significant constraint on doing business in Peru. Nevertheless, Peru offers an attractive investment environment and the present government is continuing many of the business-friendly policies of previous governments.

Positive developments in relation to corruption and investment:

  • Peru has a strong legal framework for fighting corruption.
  • The Peruvian government has adopted electronic government contracting and created an Electronic System of Procurement and Contracting for Peru.
  • The courts have substantially improved the process of resolving commercial disputes. The average time to resolve a commercial dispute through the civil court system has been reduced from two years to two months, and the period usually needed for a court decision to be enforced has been reduced from 36 months to 3 to 6 months.

Risks of corruption:

  • The public institutions granting relevant business licences suffer from widespread corruption and deficient rule of law, and companies continue to complain about excessive red tape and confusion about what licences they need and where to obtain them.
  • It is reported that corruption acts as a regressive tax because small companies pay higher bribes and suffer extortion by tax officials more often than medium and large companies do.
  • Large-scale corruption in relation to public procurement is very common. Foreign companies report that they very often pay rather large sums in bribes to win public procurement contracts.
  • Bribery and corruption reportedly occur frequently in connection with resource extraction concessions (logging, mining, and oil), particularly when these concessions are located on protected or Indigenous titled land.