Óscar Zapata: “Private investors need trust”

Óscar Zapata has recently been appointed as president of Perucameras —a union that brings together regional chambers of commerce—, and within the framework of CADE maintains that what is essential to reverse the economic slowdown is to guarantee predictability for investors.

-What reading do you have about a year in which the economy will close worse than expected?

-These measures that the Government has dictated, through the MEF with a reactivation shock, are positive and ambitious; But we must ask ourselves how prepared its ministers and officials are to carry them out and achieve results as soon as possible, and emphasize that it is as soon as possible, because the critical situation in which we find ourselves does not wait. And as we all know, things are not done by blowing. There must be execution capacity of the Government.

-And what expectations do you have considering CADE as a pillar for this reactivation?

-First of all, the expectation we have is that apparently the president Dina Boluarte is going to be present. We have seen the police deployment and one of the police officers told me that it will arrive. It would be a good message.

-What would that recipe be?

-What is really going to allow the country’s economic growth to resume is the private investment and mainly that which is allocated to large projects; and that doesn’t seem to be working. Let us not forget that private investment is the one that generates the greatest wealth and the one that generates the greatest number of jobs. 57% of formal private employment is concentrated in 4,000 large companies, which house a total of 2 million 225,000 formal workers who have a purchasing power level and a significantly higher salary.

-The loss of business confidence weighs a lot…

-If we could expand these capacities based on those projects that the Minister of Economy and Finance has spoken about (Alex Contreras), we could quickly be returning Peru to the path of growth, but things are not done with a bang. Private investors need confidence to be able to come back to your investment process. And I ask you: do the behaviors of our authorities currently inspire positive expectations? Some do, but many of them don’t.

-How much is Boluarte to blame for this deterioration?

-Probably, not much; However, he will have it if he does not do what he has to do: restore the trust of the Peruvian people because he has lost it.

-Anything else besides trust?

-Peru has signed agreements with some countries to avoid double taxation, but not with Spain. He has been trapped by bureaucracy. Immediately, this can be a measure of confidence and articulate in Perucámaras an arrival of Spanish investors, which coincides with the APEC next year or the inauguration of the port of Chancay, and we tell them that the agreement to avoid double taxation has been signed. These types of things are what we have to act on and we are interested in Perucámaras.