After several media stated that, this year, the Peruvian economy would only grow between 0% and 1.5% and would be unable to grow as much as the official estimates, the government answered such claims.
According to the general director of the Monitoring and Policy Evaluation from the Ministry of Agriculture, Christian Garay, in addition to El Niño there are other risk factors, such as the uncertain international context due to the Fed's monetary policy, which would condition the GDP growth in 2015.
"According to the Multi-sector Committee in charge of the National Study of El Niño (ENFEN), the magnitude of this climatic event will be very similar to that recorded in 2014, so no unusual rainfall is expected on the coast due to seasonality, except for some isolated episodes of rain in the departments of Tumbes and Piura," he said.
Speaking to local media, Garay said there wouldn't be any floods, as happened with El Niño in 1997-1998, because it wasn't going to rain.
Alert
In this context, the official said that, "in particular, we can't foresee any significant effect of El Niño in the economic activity in the Coast this year."
However, he noted, this doesn't mean we should lower our guard and we need to continue monitoring this phenomenon's tendencies.
"We will continue to monitor and objectively report any changes in weather conditions that there are via ENFEN. We'll do this without speculating and unnecessarily alarming the population and the productive sector," he said.
The phenomenon will have a marginal impact on the agricultural sector
The Ministry of Agriculture said that the impact of the El Niño phenomenon in the agricultural sector will be marginal, so growth estimates remain around 2%.
"According to experts, the event will only be present in May and June, and it won't be as intense as it was in 1983 or 1998," he noted.
He also stated that, to date, Peru had secured 90% of the 2014-2015 crop year, as the harvest of most fruit had already finished.
Key Data
This crop year's harvest of avocado, grape, rice, sugarcane and capsicum has already been finished.
The high temperatures can result in crop pest arrival, so the Senasa is on alert.
Source: gestion.pe