The chief of Peru’s Sierra Exportadora, Gastón Benza, called Thursday on President Alan Garcia’s Council of Ministers to approve the construction of 100 potato flour production plants to offset the rising cost of wheat and to promote the export of Peruvian potato bread, “papapan.”
“There is an important demand for potato flour in Europe, Japan and […]

The cold weather death toll continues to rise in Peru’s southern highlands after a snowstorm hit the Puno region and led to the death Wednesday of a 9 month-old baby. The meteorological phenomenon, which was widely reported in Peru’s newspapers Thursday morning, left up to 6 cm, or 2.36 inches of snow, in some areas.
Several […]

Peru Agriculture Minister Ismael Benavides said Wednesday he will sign a legislative decree to establish an agrarian compensation program to get in line with U.S.-Peru FTA requirements.
The compensation program, Benavides told state news agency Andina, is to be funded by the Public Treasury and the Inter-American Development Bank. It will administer $700 million over the […]

President Alan Garcia lauded a report by the National Statistics Institute that showed Peru’s poverty rate dropped more than 5 percentage points in 2007. But he also warned Peruvians that the figures could be fleeting.
“Just as there can be hiccups of growth that later drop, there too can be hiccups of poverty reduction that later […]

As Peru’s valuable water resources continue to diminish at an alarming rate, representatives from 15 farming federations traveled Monday to Israel to learn about the latest innovations in irrigation technology.
Agriculture Minister Ismael Benavides said the irrigation training in Israel “will help to complement our program to improve irrigation, infrastructure, and irrigation and spray-tech, which this […]

Peru’s campesino and indigenous rights groups are in an uproar over a presidential decree they say is designed to strip them of their full rights to their communal lands for outside development.
President Alan Garcia signed into law the Legislative Decree Nº 1015 on Tuesday, without congressional approval, simplifying the process for private investors to obtain […]

Peru’s interior minister stuck to his guns Wednesday as he reiterated in a second appearance before Congress that a policeman indicted for the deaths of two campesinos during a farmers strike in February did not gun down the demonstrators and that the likely culprits were fellow protesters armed with homemade shotguns.
“I said it and will […]

President Alan García tapped Peru’s celebrated environmentalist Antonio Brack to become Peru’s first minister of the environment.
“I am honored that Mr. Antonio Brack has accepted to be minister and he will have all my backing to do what must be done in defense of the environment,” García told reporters.
Meanwhile, debate is heating up over García’s […]

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by peruviantimes

Cabinet ministers and high-ranking government officials from 57 countries are in Lima, meeting behind closed doors for the Fifth European Union-Latin America and Caribbean Summit to find common ground on poverty reduction, free trade and a coordinated defense against global climate change.
Sixteen heads of state are expected to arrive by Friday to sign the Declaration […]