MEF yields to business pressure and formalizes maintaining the drawback: a blind subsidy that will cost almost s/2,000 million to 2026

As promised before the most powerful business unions in the country, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) This morning officialized a decree that maintains the current rate of drawbacka customs mechanism that returns to exporters part of the tariffs paid by the importation of raw materials used in local production.

This benefit, created in 1995 to promote the export sector, had to be reduced from 3% to 0.5% from July 31, 2025. However, now everything will return to zero foja after the officialization of Supreme Decree No. 027-2025-EF, which repealed two previous standards that established its gradual reduction and its subsequent elimination from 2026.

In the opinion of the Government“There is an international scenario of uncertainty” in foreign trade, which requires measures that allow maintaining the competitiveness of local exports.

However, the elimination of drawback It would have represented savings for the Peruvian treasury of an estimated S/770 million for 2025 and S/1 billion for 2026, according to the quantitative impact analysis of the own own MEF.

In dialogue with the Republic, economist Armando Mendoza indicated that this mechanism was created 30 years ago as a subsidy to compensate for export costs to other countries. However, to date its validity is questionable.

“Today, drawback does not make much sense. Before, Peru I had no free trade agreements With everyone. Now, our products are already in very advantageous conditions and there is greater competitiveness, even more with the Chancay megaport that decreases the cost of transport, “he said.

In the reading of the former Chief of Sunat, Luis Arias Minaya, “the drawback, as designed in Peru, is a blind subsidy and a privilege.” He has no economic support. It is supported by interest groups, “he said.

Mendoza remarks that it is a indiscriminate, indefinite and unconditional measure that falls to a management that has no space to fight things. Therefore, he proposes that the maximum could be delimited to the beneficiaries, such as when in 2022 the oil price by the Russia-Ukraine war and legal devices were issued that suspended the selective consumption tax, in addition that they were intended for certain specific products.

“It is not the same a company that exports half a million organic products compared to a mega company that has hundreds of millions of dollars,” he criticized.

For the former MEF, Luis Miguel Castilla, there is no technical justification that this mechanism is the most appropriate way to gain competitiveness, since what is stopped collecting each year represents 100% of the Together Program resources, equivalent to S/1.2 billion.

Even the norm does not take into account the damage for complaints against false exporters that inflate figures and volumes of exports to benefit from tariff restitution, he strengthened.

“A problem with Tax benefits is that they end up eternalizing. They have it and they don’t release it anymore. Who receives a benefit is Engoosina and Yano wants to release it, “Mendoza added.

The fiscal deficit worsens

He maintains that, in the face of the impact of almost S/2 billion, in a context where the accounts do not fit (Fiscal deficit It closed by 3.7%) and the state’s resources are under huge pressure, yielding further deepens the crisis. “It is necessary to control and reverse. This is a management that seeks to give in to survive,” he said.

Apart from the drawback, there are two other initiatives that the MEF holder He has given him his approval as the project of the new Agrarian Law or Chlimper 2.0 lawand the special economic zones at 0% of the Income Tax (IR). “The three measures are highly questioned and others will come. There is institutional weight loss,” said the economist.

Non -traditional exports boom

Non -traditional exports record good performance. Although they suffered a firm justified in the year 2020 product of the Covid-19 pandemic, since 2016 a positive upward trend is observed. According to the last data at the end of 2024, non -traditional offices abroad recorded US $ 20,571 million, which implied an increase of 11.3% compared to 2023.