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Bloomberg
Peru’s gross domestic product expanded 11.4% from a year earlier in the third quarter, the central bank said.
The country’s economy was 1.6% larger than in the same quarter of 2019, after it shrank more than 10% last year as a result of the pandemic. Economists had projected third-quarter growth of 10.8%.
Peru experienced months of lockdowns last year as it fought the Covid-19 outbreak. Without fiscal stimulus, GDP would have contracted 20% last year, former finance minister Maria Antonieta Alva said in August 2020. After a sharp contraction, GDP rebounded by 41.9% in the second quarter of this year from a year earlier.
Peru’s economy is expected to expand 11.7% this year, the fastest among 15 Latin American economies tracked by Bloomberg, but just 3.5% next year.
A year ago economists were projecting 8.7% growth for Peru in 2021 and 5% in 2022.
The central bank has hiked the benchmark interest rate by 175 basis points this year, compared to 225 basis points in neighbouring Chile and 575 basis points in Brazil.