Peru’s government has begun conversations for bilateral free trade agreements with seven countries, Trade and Tourism Minister Magali Silva said Monday.
Peru, which currently has free trade deals with its biggest trading partners, has started talks with Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Israel, daily El Comercio reported.
“In all of these cases we’ve initiated the conversations and we’ve made initial contact, but we haven’t yet started negotiations,” Silva said.
Silva said that some areas will be excluded from the negotiations, including textiles with India, Indonesia and Turkey.
“In this case, because they are sensitive issues, we won’t touch them, instead they will be excluded from the negotiations,” she said.
Peru, an export-driven economy, has free trade deals with the United States, China, the European Union, Canada, Japan and several other countries. It is also involved in talks to create an Asia-Pacific free trade zone called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, which is criticized by labor organizations in several countries as being an association for corporations rather than nations.
