As with most highly commodity-dependent emerging countries, Peru’s economy was pushed into a deceleration phase by the drop in global commodity prices that began in 2012. Real gross domestic product (GDP), having averaged 5.7% between 2001 and 2011, slowed to 4.2% in the first three quarters of 2016.
Although this was still high by emerging market standards, the drop in GDP did highlight Peru’s dependency on its commodities output. Of this 4.2%, 2 percentage points were attributable to copper exports, and government and private expenditure added 1 and 1.2 percentage points, respectively.