The former president of the Cajamarca Economists Association stated that, for each road stoppage, the region's development will be affected for the next three years.

During his participation in the latest edition of Heading to PERUMIN “Opportunities for the Comprehensive Development of Cajamarca,” the former president of the Cajamarca Economists Association, Óscar Mendoza, stated that social risk is one of the major concerns for the region because it implies the fall of the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that have been explained in the last 34 years.

Under that premise, he gave an example that if the inhabitants take the highway today as a protest demonstration during this quarter, it will affect the region's development for the next three years. “It is not only that they take the road at this moment, but the level of distrust is so great that it will affect us for three years,” he explained.

In this sense, he said that the best way is for the government and the companies to establish, in the shortest possible time, mechanisms to find social peace for developing investment projects, including mining projects.

Investment and Informality

Mendoza also mentioned that the confidence in private investment in Peru starts in Cajamarca with Newmont and the Yanacocha mine. “Cajamarca has an overly complex Economically Active Population (EAP). Cajamarca does not have unemployment and has never had it. There is no relation between poverty and employment, what Cajamarca does have is a high rate of informality,” he said.

Lastly, he informed that, based on his research, 94 out of every 100 Cajamarca’s citizens are informal, therefore, the unblocking of mining projects could help mitigate this problem by generating direct jobs. “For every 1% increase in private investment, poverty in Cajamarca is reduced by 0.54%,” he emphasized.