Pe­ru is on a quest not on­ly to strength­en re­la­tions with T&T but it al­so wants to as­sist Cari­com coun­tries to meet their ob­jec­tives, name­ly food se­cu­ri­ty and tourism.

David Mala­ga, Am­bas­sador of Pe­ru to the Cari­com mem­ber states, based in Port of Spain, out­lined key ob­jec­tives to the Busi­ness Guardian dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view.

He not­ed that Pe­ru and T&T es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions on Feb­ru­ary 5, 1968 and over the past 55 years, both coun­tries have main­tained strong, pos­i­tive re­la­tions giv­en the con­ver­gence of for­eign pol­i­cy in­ter­ests and shared com­mit­ment to the rule of law, democ­ra­cy and the pur­suit of peace and in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The bi­lat­er­al po­lit­i­cal di­a­logue and co­op­er­a­tion agen­da has in­ten­si­fied, the am­bas­sador added, trig­gered by the re-es­tab­lish­ment of the Em­bassy of Pe­ru in Port-of-Spain in 2015.

“The de­ci­sion of the Pe­ru­vian Gov­ern­ment to re-open an em­bassy in T&T re­flects the im­por­tance at­tached to en­hanc­ing bi­lat­er­al ties and strength­en­ing the bonds of friend­ship, di­a­logue and co­op­er­a­tion be­tween both na­tions and a new com­mit­ment to re­in­force the links be­tween Pe­ru and Cari­com,” Mala­ga added. 

Cur­rent­ly, the em­bassy is ex­plor­ing new sec­tors for south-south co­op­er­a­tion and the shar­ing of best prac­tices and in­sights in ar­eas as di­verse as in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, fish­eries, min­ing and tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion. Pe­ru and T&T signed a first Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing for in­ter-in­sti­tu­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween both coun­tries’ na­tion­al li­braries.  

Al­so, as Pe­ru ap­proach­es its na­tion­al day on Ju­ly 28, it hopes to fur­ther re­in­force its bi­lat­er­al po­lit­i­cal di­a­logue and the eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion with this coun­try.

In de­tail­ing how this can be achieved, the Am­bas­sador said Pe­ru is a suc­cess sto­ry in agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports, for in­stance.

“We have come a long way. Thir­ty years ago we did not pro­duce blue­ber­ries for ex­am­ple, and now we are the lead­ing ex­porters in the world. Grapes are al­so one of our main prod­ucts. We al­so have pa­pri­ka, as­para­gus as well as oth­er fruits and veg­eta­bles.

“We are of­fer­ing Trinidad re­li­able ex­ports at very rea­son­able prices to en­sure food se­cu­ri­ty,” Mala­ga em­pha­sised.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Pe­ru is one of the world’s largest ex­porters of quinoa, which is con­sid­ered “the gold­en grain of the An­des.”

To gen­er­ate a greater in­flux of car­go to and from both coun­tries, Pe­ru is work­ing with Co­pa Air­lines to of­fer pro­mo­tion­al prices for such flights.

On the oth­er hand, Pe­ru is seek­ing to in­crease its im­ports of fer­tilis­ers from this coun­try, which is crit­i­cal for its ex­pand­ing agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

T&T’s ex­ports to Pe­ru amount­ed to US$7.88 mil­lion in 2021, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

It al­so not­ed that Pe­ru’s ex­ports of veg­eta­bles, fruit, nuts and food prepa­ra­tions to this coun­try was US$936.03 in 2021.

Mala­ga, who was al­so ap­point­ed as the first Pe­ru­vian rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Cari­com al­so out­lined oth­er plans for the re­gion.

“We want to of­fer co­op­er­a­tion in tourism. We are work­ing to make Machu Pic­chu sus­tain­able. You can­not put too many peo­ple on to it, oth­er­wise it will col­lapse. So we have a quo­ta of tourists who can get there every day which is about 4000 tourists, but we still have to work on that.

“We can of­fer our ex­pe­ri­ence and like­wise have na­tion­als from T&T vis­it Pe­ru,” Mala­ga added.

From snow-capped moun­tains in the An­des Moun­tains to val­leys of green, nar­row gorges and beau­ti­ful desert land­scapes he de­tailed that these of­fer­ings, and many more, can be­come pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions to the T&T trav­eller.

In this re­gard the Pe­ru­vian em­bassy in Au­gust, will be hold­ing busi­ness to busi­ness tourism pro­mo­tion, with five tour op­er­a­tors and two man­agers of CO­PA Air­lines.

Apart from sites and at­trac­tions, Mala­ga said Pe­ru has in­valu­able ex­per­tise to share with this coun­try and Cari­com from its hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor, through Cen­fo­tur Pe­ru’s of­fi­cial train­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

Cre­at­ed in 1978, Cento­for, pi­o­neers in tourism train­ing and aware­ness of cur­rent trends based on new tourism and ho­tel ex­pe­ri­ences, has been ap­ply­ing in­no­v­a­tive strate­gies to train pro­fes­sion­als to de­vel­op qual­i­ty prod­ucts which al­so guar­an­tee the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of tourism.

Pe­ru is al­so billed as one of the epi­cen­tres of gas­tro­nom­ic trav­el.

For in­stance, the city of Li­ma, the gate­way to the coun­try is at the fore­front of the new food move­ment and now sees hun­dreds of thou­sands of vis­i­tors every year who ar­rive in search of the cui­sine the city has to of­fer.

In 2022 it was  ho­n­oured with three pres­ti­gious awards in the glob­al edi­tion of the World Trav­el Awards (WTA).

These were World’s Lead­ing cul­tur­al des­ti­na­tion in the world, World’s Lead­ing Tourist At­trac­tion 2022: Machu Pic­chu and World’s Lead­ing culi­nary des­ti­na­tion.

To in­tro­duce Pe­ru­vian food to the lo­cal pal­let, a Pe­ru­vian Food Fes­ti­val and pro­mo­tion of pis­co is ex­pect­ed to be held at the Hy­att Ho­tel in Sep­tem­ber. Pis­co is a Pe­ru­vian al­co­hol made grapes.

“Gas­tron­o­my is not on­ly about the food. All the com­pounds around prepar­ing our food; we sell our his­to­ry, our in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the mag­ic life in Pe­ru,” Mala­ga added.

Boost­ing the fish­eries sec­tor is al­so in­te­gral to im­prov­ing food se­cu­ri­ty and Pe­ru is al­so seek­ing to share its ex­per­tise in this re­gard.

Through we­bi­na­rs and in-per­son ses­sions, knowl­edge will be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to lo­cal fish­er­folk.

This will al­so be ex­tend­ed to Cari­com.

“For in­stance, we are the first ex­porters of gi­ant squid and we would like to share with you all the lessons we have learnt. We al­so have trout and we have a frozen fish in­dus­try,” Mala­ga said.

Tack­ling cli­mate change and safe­guard­ing against nat­ur­al dis­as­ters are pri­or­i­ties not on­ly for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states like those in the Caribbean but al­so for coun­tries like Pe­ru.

Strength­ened ef­forts in this re­gard is there­fore, sig­nif­i­cant and Pe­ru wants to as­sist.

“Pe­ru is one of the most vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries in the world re­gard­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. Cli­mate change is af­fect­ing us and at the be­gin­ning of this year for the first time in our his­to­ry, we had a cy­clone in the Pa­cif­ic Ocean…now we are wait­ing for El Ni­no to come and that is go­ing to af­fect us again with floods in the north of the coun­try and droughts in the south.

“We are do­ing pre­ven­tion con­trol. Pe­ru al­so has an op­ti­cal satel­lite and we have of­fered your gov­ern­ment co­op­er­a­tion for the map­ping of flood flows and pre­ven­tion of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters for free,” Mala­ga said.

He added this was al­so of­fered to St Vin­cent to mon­i­tor the erup­tion of La Soufrière.

Tack­ling plas­tic pol­lu­tion and gar­ner­ing sup­port for its is al­so on the agen­da.

Ac­cord­ing to Mala­ga, Pe­ru wants to draft an in­ter­na­tion­al bind­ing treaty to re­duce plas­tic waste.

“We are ready to talk and we would like to have one voice on this is­sue,” he added.