Peru, the fourth-biggest country in South America, continues to struggle to recover from a severe recession, with continued political unrest partially to blame for the economy's damage. Official data from last year revealed that the country's poverty rate increased once again.
According to the statistics institute of the Andean nation, about 29% of the total population is currently considered to be in poverty, and they are disproportionately concentrated in rural towns and villages.
The number is the second consecutive year of increase, up 1.5% from the year before, and is very close to the decade-high of 30.1% set in 2020, when travel and economic restrictions were imposed on Peru in an effort to control the COVID-19 epidemic.
In a recent report, the INEI statistics office estimated that over 596,000 more people fell below the poverty line in the previous year, increasing the total number living in poverty to almost 9.8 million.
There are approximately 35 million people living in Peru.
In urban regions, the poverty rate was approximately 26%; however, in rural areas, it might be as high as 40%. More than 80% of people lack access to necessities like water, power, mobile phone services, and the internet in four of Peru's 25 regions, primarily in Andean areas, according to INEI research.
The concept of poverty, as established by the INEI last year, is defined as per capita spending less than the cost of necessities like food and shelter, or approximately 446 soles ($120) each month for a person.
Extreme poverty, which is characterized as having a monthly income of less than 251 soles ($68), increased by 0.7 percentage points to 5.7% in the previous year, impacting 1.9 million people.
Peru, one of the leading producers of copper in the world and once one of the best-performing economies in the region, went into recession in 2023, the finance ministry said. Central bank figures indicated that the economy shrank by 0.6% last year — the lowest level since the turn of the century, with the exception of the pandemic.