Formal employment could recover with a boost to the commerce and services sectors, according to the CCL

The Institute of Economy and Business Development (IEDEP) of the Lima Chamber of Commerce indicated that in order to achieve greater growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and recovery of formal employment, the Government should focus on establishing strategies to promote the sectors Commerce and services, items that were seriously affected by the targeted measures to deal with the pandemic of the COVID-19.

“For more than a year these sectors, important generators of formal employment, have not achieved pre-pandemic growth. Today, with the new restrictions on capacity and curfew, they are prevented from operating at 100% of their capacity, especially those services related to tourism, which indirectly promotes informal employment,” said the head of IEDEP, Óscar Chavez.

He assured that if he “started” his activities under adequate pandemic control measures (social distancing and use of masks), in addition to a higher percentage of those vaccinated with the third dose (today 10%), they could achieve growth of around 5%, thus contributing to raising GDP levels, which this year projected at 3.1%.

It is estimated that part of this 2022, the activities of commerce and services will have an expansion of 3.9% and 4.6%, respectively, and together with mining and hydrocarbons (6.1%), they will only recover their production levels prepandemia.

Meanwhile, on formal employment, the IEDEP considered that the current administration should set the goal of creating 800 jobs a day in order to serve the 300,000 Peruvians who enter the economically active population (PEA) each year.

“Without the generation of formal jobs, it is very likely that this population will fall into unemployment or work informally,” said Chavez.

In this sense, he noted that the current administration should emphasize promoting private investment, since before the pandemic it reached rates of 7%; however, this year’s projection is barely 0.6%, which runs the risk of higher unemployment or an increase in informal employment.