Peru: Economic activity records lowest expansion since February in November
Economic activity expanded 3.5% year-on-year in November (October: +4.6% yoy). While November’s figure marked the lowest reading since February, it nevertheless constituted the ninth consecutive month of growth in activity. Looking at the breakdown by sector, November’s downturn was primarily due to decelerating growth in the commerce and agricultural sectors, and a steeper fall in hydrocarbons output than in the prior month.
On a monthly basis, economic activity increased 0.3% in November, which was below October’s 0.4% expansion and marked the lowest result since February. Meanwhile, the trend improved notably, with the annual average growth of economic activity coming in at 13.2% in November, up from October’s 12.6% reading.
Looking ahead, December should have seen a continuation in activity growth, although the favorable base effect will have once again reduced. However, continuing political uncertainty, spiraling inflation and tightening monetary policy all likely weighed on activity during the month.
Commenting on the outlook for 2022, Alberto J. Rojas, economist at Credit Suisse, stated:
“We are fine-tuning our 2022 real GDP growth forecast to 3.5%, from the previous forecast of 3.2%. Our higher projection is partly due to base effects as the economy performed much stronger than expected in the second half of 2021; we estimate that economic growth last year was of 13.4%. As a reference, the carry-over growth this year should be of about 2.0 percentage points (p.p.); this implies that we are assuming that economic dynamism (beyond base effects) will contribute just 1.5 p.p. to the annual result. Our conservative forecast accounts for subdued private investment due to policy uncertainty and political noise.”