LIMA (Reuters) – Peruvian Agriculture Minister Angel Manero on Monday announced a package of projects worth $24 billion to improve irrigation in the Andean nation, as the government looks to expand its farmlands by some one million hectares (3,860 square miles).
The added farmland would be larger than the size of Puerto Rico.
Manero said the funds would be spent over three to seven years, and the most important project would be the “Trasvase Maranon,” a project valued at some $7 billion that is set to carry water from the Maranon river to the Pacific coast.
“The project is vast and will irrigate more than 300,000 hectares,” Manero told a press conference.
The package is set to include some 22 projects across Peru’s coast, highlands and Amazon, and these should be awarded between 2025 and mid-2026, he said.
Peru’s agricultural exports jumped some 22% last year to total some $12.5 billion, and the government is aiming for $40 billion by 2040, helped by planned shipments of beef and pork to China.
By 2050, the government aims for agricultural exports to overtake mining as the country’s biggest economic driver. Peru is one of the world’s top suppliers of copper.
In January, Manero flagged plans for building large-scale irrigation projects along the coast that should add 250,000 hectares of new farmland this year, and plans to add some 500,000 hectares by June 2026.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Sarah Morlandl; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle)
