Peru’s widely documented economic growth miracle is a house of cards, based on exports of two products that the world currently pays a premium for and liable to a sudden stop due to the narrow exports base the country relies upon. That’s clear if you check out country exports for April 2010, a pretty typical month of sales from the country.
Of the U$2.5464Bn in exports registered in April, no less than 52% (U$1.323Bn) came from sales of copper and gold. Then comes the third major metal zinc, all the other metals (lead, silver, iron ore, tin, molybdenum etc), some 8% from hydrocarbons and then all the rest…like everything else from a list that runs to fishery, all agriculture, textiles, wood&paper, non-metallic minerals, chemicals, metal mechanicals and a list of individual items as long as your arm pale into insignificance against the all powerful non-value aggregating primary materials Cu and Au. That’s your idea of a miracle, is it? It’s luck, no more and no less. The right products at the right time.